


os e a = a ae 
i) eet te — 


M 


A Book by Rev. Paul Wilhelr 
Reviewed by Rev. 


(Published by the B. Herder Bi 


the times in Germany is the w 

in which a book on Christian j 
has taken the nation by storm. The 
are great possibilities in a people w 
by the thousands have found comfc 
and hope in the pages of this little bo 
by the Bishop of Rottenburg. Pre 
dent. Roosevelt did much to make por 
lar the “Simple Life,’ by Pastor Wa 
ner. But here is a book that has be 
its own commendation and introdu 
tion. : 

First published in 1909 as an East 
greeting, the book has gone into ma: 
editions. Although written by a Rom 
Catholic bishop. it has overleaped d 


On: of the most hopeful signs 


Io ‘19J 





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DEATH IN THE MINISTRY 
Rev. Sylvanus Haupert, D.D. 


Rev. Dr. Sylvanus Haupert, pastor 
of the Bridesburg Presbyterian church, 
Philadelphia,} died on March 31, aged 
fifty-five. if 

Sylvanus Haupert, son of Frederick 
and Philippina (Cappel) Haupert, was 
born at. Frys... Valley, \Tuasedrawas 
County, Ohio, on November 7, 1869. He 
graduated from the Dennison, Ohio, 
high school, when his older brother, Dr. 
Charles Haupert, was superintendent. 
Following this, he taught /a district 
school in Tu§carawas County for a 
year; then entered Heidelberg College. 
at Tiffin, Ohio, where he was graduated 
after a five-year course. He then com- 
pleted his preparation for his life’s 
work at McCormick Theological Sem- 
inary, Chicago, IWinois, graduating in 
1895. His first charge was that of the 
Presbyterian churches of Bradner and 
Pemberville, Ohio, going from there to 
Mason, Ohio, in 1898. During this pas- 
torate, he made a ‘trip through parts 
of Europe, Egypt d Palestine. His 
wife’s ill health necessitated his going 
to Colorado, first accepting a charge at 
Del Norte in 1902, and at Aspen in 
1903, where he remained until 1907. In 
that year, he accepted a call to the 
Westminster church of Pittsburgh, and. 
remained there for eight years. During 
this pastorate, he completed his work 
for a doctorate, and received the degree 
of Ph. D. from Grove City College«in 
1908. In 1915, Dr. Haupert came to 
his last charge, that of the Bridesburg 
church, Philadelphia. Being afflicted by 
a slight stroke, which perceptibly af- 
fected his health, he resigned this 
charge a little over a year ago, retiring 
from active service. Since last July, he 
spent his days of retirement at Acad- 
emia, Pa. While pastor in Bridesburg, 
he remodeled the Sabbath-school build- 
ing and cancelled the debt involved. 
During the influenza epidemic, he ren- 
dered every possible .assistance to the 
sick, the sorrowing and the distressed. 
Wherever there was need, Dr. Haupert 
went and gave himself to the service 
of all. He was a splendid preacher and 
a devoted pastor. He was widely 
known and greatly beloved by. Jali 
When compelled to retire from the ac- 
tive ministry, Dr. Haupert was made 
pastor-emeritus of the Bridesburg 


‘A Rab Boo Ue ee ee ee Se ose 





, ae AY SOME 


ZO eae 


Library of The Cheolo gical Seminary 


PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 











CP 





PRESENTED BY 


| The Estate of 
BZ s00-.-K45 1934 ane 


Keppler, Paul Wilhelm vo 
1852-1926. is 


More joy 








BY 70, 
a a 
Sin 


Rs £ FLOP es a se WW thE 
Tue RT. REV. PAUL WILHELM VON KEPPEER ~ 


Bisuop oF RorrensuRrG 


ADAPTED INTO ENGLISH 
FROM THE EDITION OF 1911 


BY 


THE. REV. JOSEPH McSORLEY, C. S. P. 


FIFTH EDITION 


B. HERDER BOOK CO. 
17 SOUTH BROADWAY, ST. LOUIS, MO. 
AND 
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1924 


NIHIL OBSTAT 


Sti. Ludovici, die 26. Feb. 1914 
F. G. Holweck, 


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-Joannes J. Glennon, 
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Sti. Ludovici. 


Copyright, 1914 


by 
Joseph Gummersbach 


All rights reserved 


Printed in U. 8. A. 


First impression, May 1914 
Second impression, September 1914 
Third impression, December 1915 

Fourth impression, 1919 
Fifth impression, 1924 


VAIL -BALLOU PRESS, INC. 
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


“JOY!’? No sooner is the word written 
down than a solemn feeling takes possession of 
me. It seems as if a thousand little faces, 
haloed with children’s hair, look at me sadly. 
Tears are falling from eyes of brown and eyes 
of blue; and I hear voices pleading: ‘‘Do bring 
us joy; we need it, oh, so sorely.’’ 

Then I see other faces, withered, worn, tor- 
mented by fear, and their dull looks say plainly: 
“Speak not to us of joy; it is only an illusion.”’ 

But then, beyond these again, there are others, 
radiant with happiness and affection, that turn 
to me encouragingly: ‘“Yes: Do speak of it. 
Tell us what to do in these unhappy times to 
save joy from destruction and to get more of it, 
for ourselves and for everybody.’’ 

So I am going to speak of joy. Would that 
all who still believe and hope, might listen to me; 
that all who still love joy and mankind, might 
assist me. Then indeed, the phrase I have 
placed on the title-page would soon be something 
more than a wish, an aspiration. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
In 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


httos://archive.org/details/morejoyOOkepp 


CHAPTER 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 
Tuer Ricut to Joy 
DOAN D LEE AGH ae aie cuuiurat teh nes lpr hs 


MopERN DESTROYERS OF JOY . . . , 


Too Many PLEASURES AND TOO LiTTLE Joy . 


UOVRAND. CART ayo) oh Siti eel Waihi SR rR 
JOY AND THE FOLK-SONG 

JOY AND YOUTH . 

JOY AND CHRISTIANITY . 

THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN 

JoY AND Houy SCRIPTURE . 

JOY AND HOLINESS . . 

A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE .. . 
More Joy 

LitTtLe Joys 

JOY AND GRATITUDE . 

JOY AND EDUCATION SHRI ainsi ea ae 
NOVO HROUGH JOY a vee nae deen te 


PAIS ANTS RECT Cian ing Canin ea cen Gan CUNNING 


183 


, 195 


CHAPTER 
XIX 
xX 
XXI 
XXII 
Dae OE 
XXIV 


CONTENTS 


JOY AND THE CARE oF SOULS . 


JOY AND THE LOVE oF NATURE 
JOY IN WORK 

JOY OF THE SOUL 

REJOICE ! 


CoNCLUSION 


PAGE 


. 203 
rone 
. 226 
. 236 
. 244 
. 256 


INTRODUCTION 
THE STORY OF THIS LITTLE BOOK 


One dreary winter I wrote my Little Book of 
Joy; and, in the spring of 1909, I sent it forth as 
an Haster greeting. It met a kindly welcome 
here and abroad, among both people of cul- 
ture, and those commonly miscalled the ‘‘lower 
classes.’?’ Wafted by a happy fate over land 
and sea, it encountered a larger number of 
friends than provision had been made for, and 
was introduced in more than one foreign land 
before it had yet learned the language of the 
country. Denominational barriers were low- 
ered before it; and from the reviewers it ob- 
tained passports even into hostile camps. 
When, after a year of travel, it came home again 
to its author, it bore the proud title “ Fiftveth 
Thousand’’; and had many a tale to tell. Well- 
filled mail-bags from both hemispheres followed 
it home, bringing touching testimonies of grati- 
tude, moving confidences from pain-racked souls, 


messages of enthusiastic concurrence, of keen 
i 


ii INTRODUCTION 


criticism, of encouragement, together with re- 
quests for ‘‘more.”’ 

The author felt constrained to put all this to 
good use, to return greetings, to correct blunders, 
to comply with requests. Thus a new edition 
has come into existence; and now, bearing the 
device “‘Fifty-fourth Thousand,’ the Little 
Book begins its second voyage around the world. 
It is going to tap gently at the door of old 
friends, to greet them in the author’s name and to 
thank them. Perhaps it is also going to enroll 
new friends in the crusade of joy. 

In behalf of this crusade, we may properly 
enough here set down one or two wholly imper- 
Sonal observations suggested by many kind, and. 
a few unsympathetic, criticisms. 

Our Little Book found its starting point, and 
indeed its very reason of being, in the joyless- 
ness of modern civilization. To establish the 
fact of this joylessness appeared to be the very 
first and also the most difficult step. On this 
point, therefore, I deliberately multiplied au- 
thorities high in the world’s esteem, feeling quite 
prepared nevertheless to meet with contradic- 
tion and to be reproached for my pessimistic 
view of the age. Great was my surprise to en- 
counter on every side, not denial of the world’s 


INTRODUCTION ili 


joylessness, but admission and acknowledgment. 
General agreement in every quarter; thousands 
of hands reaching out eagerly for the Little 
Book ;—this seemed like a new and almost terri- 
fying evidence of the extent to which men were 
suffering from the lack of joy. 

Now, the poisonous weed of pessimism 1s no 
Christian, or Catholic, growth; it flourishes in the 
world’s own soil. As Father Weiss has noted,’ 
itis the unbeliever, not the Christian, who makes 
the bitterest, most pitiless criticisms of life: 

‘Schilling calls existence a farce, an absurd 
romance; Feuerbach, a madhouse, a jail; Scho- 
penhauer, a sham, an annoying and useless inter- 
ruption of the steady calm of eternal nothingness, 
Swinburne in Atalanta describes life as a time, 


‘Filled with days we would not fain behold 
And nights we would not hear of.’ 


And Moritz Block affirms that throughout hu- 
man history, evil keeps so much to the fore and 
good so far in the background, that we can 
get statistics of evil conduct only, never of the 
good.’’ 

There is more optimism, a stronger affirmation 


1 Lebensweisheit in der Tasche, 12, Freiburg, 1910, 99. (References 
in German are copied from Bishop Keppler, without verification. 
Tr.) 


iv INTRODUCTION 


of the value of life, in Catholic Christianity than 
in all the rest of the world. 

I am a confirmed optimist and I think I have 
set the imprint of optimism on this Little Book. 
But healthy optimism finds very little support in 
a vague hope that improvement will come at 
last. It insists upon getting at the root of exist- 
ing evils, giving them their true names, and then, 
laying hold of them with both hands to uproot 
them. Optimists do not wait for improvement; 
they achieve it. | 

My judgment upon modern art was by some 
called too harsh. Certain sharp phrases I have 
since canceled. But, as a whole, my criticism 
was justified, for it is not true that the infirm- 
ities indicated have been completely cured, or 
that Manet’s principle of ‘‘Art for art’s sake’’ 
has been wholly abandoned by our artists. 
Every annual exhibition proves the contrary. 
And in so far as improvement has come, it has 
hardly come as the result of sounder principles. 
One fashion has simply replaced another; and 
there is no guarantee that the vagaries now dis- 
credited will not in the tortuous course of fash- 
ion some day again become the modern vogue. 
Hven before this Little Book was published, an 
intensely modern man had recommended to 


INTRODUCTION Vv 


contemporary art the very same prescription of 
More Joy. ‘‘ Nothing made in sadness will ever 
diffuse joy. Hence above all else, I would 
appeal to modern art for more joy. I do not 
mean playfulness, nor frivolity; but that holy 
sort of joy which is born of pain and earnest 
effort, the joy we see on the face of the dying 
Schiller, the joy perceptible in all sincere art 
that still speaks to us with living voice.’’’ 

All honor to the noble efforts, the skilful work- 
manship, the technical progress that we witness 
in the world of art. But let it not be proclaimed 
that we have already crossed the mountains and 
acquired an art and a style all our own. Morbid 
fear of forfeiting originality by studying the 
great masters, weak-kneed readiness to imitate 
whatever is most modern, childish contempt of 
all tradition, effeminate devotion to fashion, 
pursuit of sensation and novelty, and, at the same 
time, a distressing poverty of great thoughts, 
deep feelings, warm affections,—these are no 
symptoms of health. And where there is not 
health, certainly there can be no Joy. 

Of course, it is praiseworthy in our artists 
that, by way of change, they have turned their 


2A. von Gleichen-Russwurm, Sieg der Freude, Stuttgart; 1909, 
250. 


V1 INTRODUCTION 


attention to winter scenes, to ice-fields and snow- 
landscapes, endeavoring to catch and reproduce 
the never-failing charm of these. But when in 
this present year of 1910, winter scenes and snow- 
landscapes appear at the Glaspalast by the dozen, 
many of them looking like attempts to kill poor 
dead nature all over again, a chill fastens upon 
our spirits and we find ourselves not at all dis- 
posed to believe that this is a young, vigorous, 
joyous school of art. Widespread and careful 
attention ought to be given to the critical articles 
of Momme Nissen in the Kunstwart,? in which 
he points out the true road to progress. It will 
be a pity if all his true and clever observations 
go for naught. 

It betrays shortsightedness and superficiality 
and inexperience when Christians are denied the 
privilege of being right heartily joyful in this 
life, just because they are not exclusively devoted 
to it, but are solicitous also about the life to 
come. And it is worse than shortsighted and 
Superficial when a paper professedly Christian, 
—although addicted to the ‘‘sport’’ of baiting 
everything Catholic,—proclaims its discovery of 
a new species, namely, ‘‘Catholic Pessimism’’; 
and offers as sole evidence the deductions that 

8 dahrgang 17 und 18. 


INTRODUCTION Vil 


ean be drawn from Catholic faith in Our Savior’s 

saying, ‘‘The Lord shall come as a thief in the 
night,’’ from Catholic belief in the Last Judg- 
ment and in Eternal Punishment, and from Cath- 
olic use of the words of the Salve Regina, “‘Ad 
te clamamus, exules filu Hevae.’’ The re- 
viewer includes among his observations this 
peculiarly interesting one that ‘‘as a rule, even 
Catholics of the best class do not work any longer 
than they have to, and prefer to retire at the early 
age of forty-five.”’ 

No one will venture to affirm, much less at- 
tempt to prove, that to limit life to this present 
existence, to shun the thought of death, to elimi- 
nate belief in judgment and immortality, to rep- 
resent the world as a paradise, a sort of heaven 
on earth, is sufficient to do away with all suffer- 
ing and to keep the cup of joy filled to the brim. 
Then only does joy become solid and enduring 
when it has learned to face boldly the pain of this 
life and the threat of ever-approaching death, 
when it has contrived to make the anchor of hope 
catch hold of eternity. 

To think of death and to prepare for death, is 
not a surrender; it is a victory over fear. 
In fact, the fear of death presses all the 
harder upon worldlings and unbelievers, in the 


vill INTRODUCTION 


measure that they try to shun every thought of 
Tiss 

Once upon a time our German people were well 
aware that the true joy of living results from 
being ready to die. They had a saying: ‘‘He 
that thinks of death begins to live.’’ They did 
not shrink from preparing shroud and grave- 
clothes long beforehand and laying them aside 
ready for use. The sight of these things only 
heightened the sense of being alive and the pleas- 
ure of work. Chamisso’s ‘Old Washerwoman,”’ 
cheerfully stitching her shroud with her own 
hands and keeping it as carefully as a wedding- 
dress, belongs to a type fortunately not yet ex- 
tinct among our people. Let us not forget the 
poet’s concluding wish: 


I would I were as wise as she, 
Life’s cup to empty, never sighing; 
And then, with joy like hers, to see 
The shroud made ready for my dying. 
4See A. Wibbelt, Ein Trostbiichlein vom Tode, Warendorf, 1911. 


MORE JOY 


i 
THE RIGHT TO JOY 


Strange as it may seem, we shall have to begin 
with establishing man’s right to joy, for although 
fundamental, this right is, at the present time, 
often misunderstood and as often undervalued. 
How much men mistake the true nature of joy, 
may be seen from their feverish thirst for it and 
their mad pursuit of it. Not a few regard it as 
a delicious relish, a sweet morsel, to be greedily 
devoured whenever found; or a sort of cham- 
pagne for the gratification of the rich; or an 
honor reserved to decorate Fortune’s favorites. 
On the other hand, many speak contemptuously 
of joy, call it a bonbon for women and children 
and, setting their faces in a pessimistic frown, 
pose as men of lofty intellect and wide experience. 
Pious souls, too, there may be, who in their sim- 
plicity look upon all joy as the disguised foe of 

1 


2 MORE JOY 


religion and holiness. And more numerous and 
more simple still, are the persons absolutely op- 
posed to all religion and piety because they re- 
gard these as the irreconcilable enemies of joy. 

The truth is, however, that joy is a constituent 
of life, a necessity of life; it is an element of life’s 
value and life’s power. As every man has need 
of Joy, so too, every man has a right to joy. It 
is indispensable to the health of both soul and 
body; it is necessary to physical and spiritual 
industry; it is a condition of religious living. 

Hence it is not a mere poetical phrase to say 
that joy acts upon human beings as sunshine 
upon plants. The quickening influence of joy 
and the paralyzing effect of sadness are readily 
observed. In children especially, we note that 
sorrow deadens, whereas happiness revives and 
enlivens. With invalids happiness actually 
works miracles,—a fact known and utilized by 
sage physicians. 

The English physician, Weber,! lays stress 
upon the importance of cultivating cheerful- 
ness. It is to be attained and preserved by 
a strong sense of duty and by restraint of the 
passions; and, to effect this, the chief instrument 


1 Sir Hermann Weber, On Means for the Prolongation of Life, Lon- 
don, 1908, ch. xii. 


THE RIGHT TO JOY 3 


is the will. Physiologically, the influence of the 
feelings on the organism is explained as follows: 

Joy and hope, by quickening respiration, in- 
crease the flow of blood to the brain and the sup- 
ply of nourishment to the nerve-cells. On the 
contrary, psychic depression retards respiration 
and heart-action and lessens the blood-flow to the 
brain, causing first functional and then organic 
derangement. What we may call the gymnas- 
tics of joy, therefore, would produce definite and 
physiological results, would expand the lungs 
and ease the heart,—like a deep breath of pure 
mountain air,—thereby improving the whole 
psychic life, and warding off or expelling illness. 

Joy is ozone for both body and soul. Just as 
the fragrant odor of sassafras, wafted from the 
shore, roused Columbus and his crew out of their 
despondency to new life, so are we often awak- 
ened and enlivened by the fragrance of joy. 
True joy, which springs from sources undefiled, 
works upon the soul no less than upon the senses. 
It is the balm of life. In education, it is a price- 
less aid; in work, it is the best possible assistant; 
and in all social life, it is a most important factor. 

At times our strength and energy seem to be 
actually redoubled by the coming of joy. A 
man’s power to will and to do is reinforced. He 


gS 


42 


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4 MORE JOY 


is made bold, he is kept undismayed. Many a 
lofty resolve and many a noble deed have been 
born of joy. It smilingly shows us how to get 
over obstacles and how to get out of difficulties. 
Working ever with high purpose, zealous for the 
good, the true, the beautiful, joy keeps a man’s 
lower inclinations under strict control and de- 
velops his best capacities. Under the magic of 
its influence, he grows gracious, kindly, ready to 
serve. Thus joy brings individuals closer to- 
gether, promotes social intercourse, and ties the 
knot of friendship. 

Joy preserves and fosters optimism and averts 
pessimism,—a most meritorious achievement. 
Emerson says truly: ‘‘I find the gayest castles 
in the air that were ever piled, far better for com- 
fort and for use than the dungeons in the air that 
are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, 
discontented people. I know those miserable 
fellows, and I hate them, who see a black star 
always riding through the light and colored 
clouds in the sky overhead: waves of light pass 
over and hide it for a moment, but the black star 
keeps fast in the zenith. But power dwells with 
cheerfulness; hope puts us in a working mood, 
whilst despair is no muse, and untunes the active 
powers. A man should make life and nature 


THE RIGHT TO JOY 5 


happier to us, or he had better never been 
OLE 7 

Even from a religious point of view, this fine 
tribute to joy need not be essentially modified, 
nor restricted to the higher and supernatural 
forms of joy. There is a notion,—common 
enough, yet false——that Christianity, with its 
austere morality, its summons to penance, its 
doctrine of pain, its view of the necessity and 
value and merit of suffering, demands always re- 
nunciation of joy, or, at best, perfect indifference 
in its regard. Later on we shall show how er- 
roneous is this belief. 

No one can live without joy, not even the 
Christian soul following the path of perfection. 
Indeed, a cheerful, happy, friendly spirit is more 
often encountered among believers and Chris- 
tians than among unbelieving and irreligious 
men. Among the saints the proportion of joyous 
souls is particularly great. It is not the ‘‘mod- 
erns’’ in art and letters, but the religious writ- 
ers and poets and artists, that have most care- 
fully cultivated, most warmly befriended, and 
most sincerely championed the cause of joy. In 
the history of modern literature we find a shock- 
ing number of famous names listed as foes of joy 

2 Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Lrfe, ch. vii. 


@ 


2 


6 MORE JOY 


and prophets of pessimism, from Leopardi, ‘‘the 
black swan of Recanati,’’ to Schopenhauer, 
Nietzsche and their lugubrious disciples. 

On the other hand, it was an eighteenth-cen- 
tury Capuchin who undertook to defend joy 
against the Jansenistic rigorism which cast a 
gloom not only over the religious life, but over 
all existence. I refer to Ambroise de Lombez ? 
whose book on ‘‘The Joy of the Soul’’ still de- 
serves toberead. He loudly proclaims the worth 
of joy: 

‘‘Joy is useful to virtue, useful in the transac- 
tion of business, useful in society, useful for all 
good things. As long as your soul is in joy, 
your intellect will be more active and productive, 


/your ideas will be clearer, your imagination 


more lively, your heart more at rest, your tem- 
per more gay and cheerful, your society more 
agreeable, even your health stronger, or at all 
events less delicate; your piety will be sweeter, 
your virtue more generous. ... Joy is useful 
in the transaction of business. With the help 
of joy, the fatigue of our necessary labor is made 
easy; our difficulties vanish; we unravel the knot 
of our perplexities; the means of attaining suc- 


8 His real name was La Pairie. He was a native of Lombez in 
Languedoc and lived from 1708 to 1778. 


THE RIGHT TO JOY ff 


cess in our undertakings becomes clear tous. A 
melancholy and gloomy man is not at all fit for 
the management of affairs, everything disgusts 
him, the least thing puts him out of temper, the 
slightest difficulty discourages him. He either 
neglects his duties altogether, or they suffer con- 
siderably from the gloom and weariness pervad- 
ing his soul. ... Melancholy was never-a vir- 
tue, and never will be; it takes away from the 
value of our sacrifices, instead of adding thereto. 
The Apostle tells us that ‘God loves a cheerful 
giver,’ and nothing does more honor to the ‘yoke’ 
of His service than the calm serenity on the brow 
of those who bear the whole weight of it, for His 
sake.’’ 4 

Frederick W. Faber, the English Oratorian, 
who died at London in 1863, waged war against 
the contemporary spirit of sourness and pessi- 
mism. Throughout his numerous ascetical writ- 
ings there runs a pure stream of joy. So whole- 
some and so sensible is his teaching that we may 
well summarize it here. 

As Goethe terms joyousness the mother of all 
virtues, Father Faber calls it the atmosphere of 
heroic virtues. ‘‘It is doing no injury to the 


4Treatise on the Joy of the Christian Soul, London, 1894, pp. vi 
and 9-11. 


8 MORE JOY 


mortified character of high sanctity to say that 
joy is one of the most important elements in the 
spiritual life, and nothing is more common than 
cases in which persons are kept back from great 
attainments, or from persevering in their voca- 
tions, by the want of joy. They say there was 
an epoch on this planet of ours when, from the 
quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, the 
growth of vegetation was magnificently prolific, 
rapid, and gigantic. Just so is it in the spiritual 
life when everything breathes of holy and super- 
Natural jOViieree 

‘‘T¢ cannot be too often repeated that it 1s no 
honor to holy mortification to think or speak 
lightly of the sweetness, and the balm, and the 
fragrance of spiritual joy. . . . Now it is quite 
notorious that joy is of all things the one which 
most helps us in sustaining this equable sweetness 
towards others. When we are joyful, nothing 
comes amiss tous. Nothing takes us by surprise 
or throws us off our guard. Unkindly inter- 
pretations of other men’s deeds and words seem 
unnatural to us; and we lose our facility of judg- 
ing harshly and of suspecting unreasonably. No 
matter what duty we are unexpectedly called 
upon to do, no matter what little unforeseen dis- 
appointments come upon us, no matter what sud- 


THE RIGHT TO JOY * 


den provocations to petulance and irritability 
assail us, all seems to come right. There is no 
shadow in our souls under which we can sit and 
be morose; for the grace of joy is as universal as 
the strong sunshine of a fine day.’’® 

It is joy alone which can give liberty of spirit. 
Without it, ‘‘helps become hindrances, sacra- 
ments formalities, fervors scruples, and. the or- 
der of rule and habit, instead of being a facility 
_ of expansion, grows into a chain of bondage and 
pusillanimity.’’® Far from being destructive of 
joy, mortification is its foundation and chief sup- 
port. ‘We cherish our joy in order to nurture 
our mortified spirit, and we practice austerities 
in order to increase our joy. . . . Self-love is the 
filth, the squalor, the confinement, the poverty, 
the depression, the bad air of the spiritual life, 
and mortification is our emancipation from it 
all. What wonder it should be so joyous?... 

‘Tf the saints are such gay sprites, and monks 
and nuns such unaccountably cheerful creatures, 
it is simply because their bodies, like St. Paul’s, 
are chastised and kept under with an unflinching 
sharpness and a vigorous discretion. He that 
would be joyous, must first be mortified; and he 


5 The Blessed Sacrament, Book II, 
6 Ibid. 


10 MORE JOY 


that is mortified is already joyous, with the joy 
that is of pure, celestial birth.”’ ‘ 

Of course, sorrow is precious, inevitable, in- 
dispensable, meritorious, but we have absolutely 
no right to set it above joy. Joy is antecedent, 
primary, a condition of eternity, whereas sorrow 
is a sequel of sin and a condition of time. Joy 
and sorrow work together in the life of the Chris- 
tian, blending into one another and alternating 
with each other, like the heaving and sinking of 
the ocean’s billows. ‘*They live together be- 
cause they are sisters. Joy is the eldest-born, 
and when the younger dies—as she will die—joy 
will keep a memory of her about her forever- 
more, a memory which will be very gracious, so 
gracious as to be part of the bliss of heaven.’’® 

Joy is the sail of the boat; he who knows how 
to manage this sail, can take advantage even of 
adverse winds and make them serve towards a 
swifter voyage. True pure joy is as good a 
tutor as sorrow and is equally necessary, if not 
more so. ‘‘T'here are souls, too, in the world 
which have the gift of finding joy everywhere, 
and of leaving it behind them when they go. Joy 
gushes from under their fingers like jets of light. 
There is something in their very presence, in 

7 Ibid. & Bethlehem, ch. viii. » 


THR IGE SRO JOY 11 


their mere silent company, from which joy can- 
not be extricated and laid aside. . . . Of a truth, 
he is the happiest, the greatest, and the most god- 
like of men, as well as the sole poet among men, 
who has added one true joy to the world’s stock 
of happiness.’’ ® 

Quite in keeping with the importance of joy 
in human life is the divine care to provide joy 
in both the natural and supernatural order, so 
that every creature shall be able to appropriate at 
least as much as is necessary for existence. 

In the creating of joys, nature is as tireless 
and as lavish as in the making of flowers; to each 
season and to each place she assigns its own. No 
well-ordered life, no life that is reasonable, moral 
and Christian, will be entirely without joy. Sol- 
itude and society, rest and labor, prayer and serv- 
ice, faith and hope and love,—all have their own 
peculiar joys. By the wise cultivation of joy, 
the life of the individual and of society will be 
illumined, ennobled, adorned. Art and poetry es- 
pecially, have the fair calling and an almost 
miraculous ability to ‘‘twine heavenly roses into 
earthly lives.’’ 'T'rue religion, true Christianity, 
may be determined by this property,—it in- 
creases, rather than lessens, the joy of life. 

9 Ibid. 


12 MORE JOY 


To this extent then, the question of the joyous- 
ness of an epoch is really a question of conscience 
and of education, and it is a question that must 
be put to our own age. 


IT 
JOY AND THE AGE 


Is our age rich or poor in joy? The optimist 
who says it is rich may be envied but he will 
hardly be believed. Frankly, joylessness, yea 
despair, is characteristic of our age, and domin- 
ant in the life of people. It would be easy enough 
from the pages of modern literature to piece to- 
gether long jeremiads, mourning choruses, sym- 
phonies of lamentation; but we refrain. Neither 
shall we quote from avowed pessimists. Nor 
shall we even enter our own judgment, since we 
are so unmodern that our opinion would be 
neither accepted nor excused. On the point in 
question, however, let us hear men unquestion- 
ably capable of judging, men revered as proph- 
ets, or at least acknowledged as authorities, by 
the modern world. 

There could hardly be a severer censure than 
the following drastic comment of a critic who is 
certainly far from being religious, namely, the 


much overrated Chamberlain: 
13 


14 MORE JOY 


*‘And so this too great preoccupation with the 
material banished the beautiful almost entirely 
from life; at the present moment there exists 
perhaps no savage, at least no half-civilized peo- 
ple, which does not to my mind possess more 
beauty in its surroundings and more harmony in 
its existence as a whole than the great mass of 
so-called civilized Europeans.’’ ! 

Rudolf EKucken, one of the most earnest and 
noble of modern philosophers, regards as demon- 
strated the inadequacy of a merely human cul- 
ture divorced from faith in another world: 

“It splits life up into opposing extremes. 
Now it throws man back upon himself as a refuge 
from the icy coldness of a soulless world, and 
again it bids him flee from the narrow, stultify- 
ing influences of human relationships to the 
ampler life of the universe. Nowhere is there 
a sure footing, nowhere a comprehensive synthe- 
sis, nowhere a life that repays all the toil and 
trouble which highly civilized man is bound to 
expend on it. And this failure appears all the 
more disconcerting when we remember the great- 
ness of the hopes which attended the birth of the 

1 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des 19 Jahrhun- 


derts, vol. I, p. 32. Translated by John Lees, New York, 1912, 
p. xXcvi. 


JOY AND THE AGE 15 


movement. Life in its progress has shattered 
these hopes and reversed all expectations. We 
looked for certainty, and have fallen into griey- 
ous perplexity. We sought a life that should 
be one and single, and found it dismembered and 
self-conflicting. We craved happiness and tran- 
quillity, and could find only conflict, trouble, and 
sorrow.’’? 

He calls modern culture mere material devel- 
opment, not true culture of the spirit; and de- 
clares it utterly worthless: | 

‘*W hirling complexity, restless hurry and pur- 
suit, a passionate exaltation of self and an 
overweening pushing of its claims against those 
of others; life occupied with alien interests 
rather than its own; no inward problems or in- 
ward motives; little pure enthusiasm or genuine 
love; the fostering and furthering of self ever 
the dominant note, despite all boastful profes- 
sion and even some really honest work; man, with 
his likes and dislikes, the supreme arbiter of good 
and evil, true and false, so that the main goal of 
endeavor is to win social favor and respect ap- 
pearances. All this, however much it may make 
profession of following after ideal goals and be- 


2The Meaning and Value of Life. Translated by Lucy Judge Gib- 
son and W. R. Boyce Gibson, London, 1913, p. 63. 


16 MORE JOY 


ing guided by ideal sentiments, yet reveals in 
every part of it an inner insincerity, a repellent 
unreality, a spiritual tameness and hollowness.’’ ® 

In another passage he calls modern culture ‘‘a 
sham, straining after pomp and polish, substi- 
tuting external service for interior development, 
sacrificing the intrinsic value of life to mere util- 
ity, and inevitably becoming mere show and 
emptiness.”’ * 

Friedrich Paulsen, in his latest work, speaks 
still more sharply: ‘‘It is as if, in one instant, 
all the devils had been let loose to devastate the 
fields of German life.’? He draws particular at- 
tention to the fact that modern education, so 
effeminate, so deficient in character and so neg- 
lectful of character, brings no increase of joy to 
young people, but quite the contrary. ‘*The 
young people of to-day, the product of a soft, 
weak, yielding method of education, look on 
themselves as unfortunate, oppressed, misunder- 
stood, and abused, whereas formerly strict dis- 
cipline was borne with patience and even with 
cheerfulness.’’ ° 

Keen and accurate is the judgment of Werner 


8 Ibid., p. 139. 

4 Miinchener Neueste Nachrichten, Beilage, I, 1908. 

5 Moderne Drziehung und geschlechiliche Sittlichkeit, Berlin, 1908, 
&3, 86. ; 


JOY AND THE AGE 17 


Sombart: ‘To-day our real insight into the es- 
sence of things is in no sense better than before. 
Modern culture has done nothing for our inner 
life, our happiness, our contentment, our thor- 
oughness.’’ 
 **Far better be a wood-chopper than to live 
any longer this worthless civilized and educated 
life. We must get back to the sources high up 
in the lonely mountains,’’ is the dejected ery of 
P. de Lagarde. 

Another recent critic expresses himself as 
follows: ‘‘Our unquiet and restless life is full 
of painful groaning and yearning. Day by day 
our fund of knowledge grows. Scarcely any im- 
passable obstacles confront our progress in tech- 
nical science, . . . and still we take no joy in it, 
still we hear louder and louder the tiresome, 
troublesome question, ‘To what purpose?’ We 
lack that which gives life its basis and inspira- 
tion,—namely, a sure philosophy. Or rather, we 
have come to the point where we can no longer 
live on the philosophy which since the Age of 
Enlightenment has been impressing itself more 
and more on our whole spiritual life. Material- 
ism and greed, in coarser or finer form, have per- 
meated our habits of thought, even with those of 
us who would angrily repudiate the name ‘Ma- 


i8 MORE JOY 


terialist.’ Along with materialism there used 
to exist a considerable capital of antique ideal- 
ism; and so long as a man could live on this, ma- 
terialism seemed to be a force for the destruction 
of deep-rooted prejudices and the opening of a 
path to progress in every field. The new gene- 
ration retains little or nothing of this old capital. 
Brought up in exclusive materialism, it sees 
before it an existence of frightful barrenness 
and emptiness. And now that even the man on 
the street has got hold of the childishly simple 
principle of materialism and from the heights of 
‘scientific’ philosophy looks down with scorn 
upon all reactionaries, we are beginning to recog- 
nize the peril that threatens everything associ- 
ated with the word, ‘Humanity.’ This explains 
why so many contemporary writings deal with 
questions of philosophy.’ ® 

H. W. Foerster* and Robert Saitschick® are 
fundamentally in accord with this judgment. 
Foerster contrasts the technical culture of to-day 
with the spiritual culture of the Middle Ages 
and points out that modern education directs the 
attention to secondary matters, destroys interior 


6 Literarisches Zentralblatt, 1909, Nr 23. 

7 Jugendlehre, Berlin, 1905, often reédited. 

8 Quid est Veritas? Hin Buch iiber die Probleme des Daseins, Ber- 
lin, 1907. 


JOY AND THE AGE 19 


peace, estranges men from one another and makes 
them in many respects inwardly poorer though 
externally richer. He doubts if the victories of 
modern civilization render the life of the spirit 
surer and deeper; and do not rather, in the long 
run, tend to coarsen and ruin the spirit, entailing 
moral deterioration while promoting material 
comfort. He thinks that the poverty and empti- 
ness of our lives will yet open our eyes and make 
us realize that true culture is impossible unless 
the life of the soul is the center of thought and 
interest. 

Saitschick says: ‘‘Never have men heaped up 
such masses of knowledge, and never perhaps did 
the educated know less of what man really needs 
to know. ‘They read easily in the book of nature, 
but the human soul is a sealed volume to them.’’ 
Hence the struggle for happiness, the desire to 
heighten and multiply pleasant sensations, leads 
to no goal. Man is looking for ‘‘a level land of 
painlessness through which ripples a shallow 
brook of sensuous pleasure’’; and even this he 
seeks 1n vain. 

These thinkers agree that, despite all technical 
progress, all beautifying and improving of the 
conditions of life, despite all increasing and re- 
fining of pleasure, modern culture is unable to 


20 MORE JOY 


satisfy the inner man, but impoverishes and 
weakens and empties him, and ends with a la- 
mentable deficit of joy. It admits failure and at 
heart is plainly diseased, rotten. Yor all healthy 
culture buds and blooms in joy; all healthy life 
incessantly and in rich fullness puts forth flowers 
of joy. 

The above testimonies indicate where the fault 
hes. Modern culture is fundamentally worldly, 
and of this present life; it is culture of technical 
science, culture of the intellect. Hence it is in- 
capable of satisfying or contenting man, and is 
empty of joy. True culture is essentially inner 
culture of heart and soul. ‘‘Only when we set a 
higher value upon character than upon knowl- 
edge and thought,’’ says Saitschick® quite 
rightly, ‘‘are we tilling the soil in which real cul- 
ture grows.”’ 

The overrating of knowledge and intellect at 
the cost of will and character is the malady of 
our age and has made us unhappy. We should 
pay more attention to Schiller’s saying, ‘‘When 
a man has once reached the point of cultivating 
his mind at the expense of his heart, to him the 
holiest thing is no longer holy; to him man and 


9 Quid est Veritas? 102. 


JOY AND THE AGE 21 


God are nothing; neither world is aught in his 
eyes. 79 10 

In a misguided search for external and intel- 
lectual development, man has undoubtedly gone 
astray in the wilderness. Any culture affecting 
intellect and memory, but not heart and soul, will 
be poor in joy, because it can never give peace 
and happiness to the inner man. Intellectual 
processes and intellectual activities may indeed 
be accompanied with joyous feelings, but these 
are only reflected joys, cold like frost-flowers on 
the window-pane. Indeed, these Joys may even 
be dangerous by chilling the soul with pride and 
arrogance. If love, faith, and religion die of 
this chill, the inner misery is complete. How 
often does it happen that the man of highly de- 
veloped intellect and vast knowledge satisfies his 
hunger for joy with merely sensual, nay bestial, 
gratifications. For although the tyrant intellect 
may be able to bind the heart and soul and cast 
them into cold dungeons, it cannot alone subdue 
the struggles of sensual nature. Under its su- 
premacy, they get more cunning and more brutal. 

Again is Tantalus the symbol of men fevered 
with thirst for joy. ‘‘Tantalus, who in old times 


10 Preface to “The Robbers.” 


22 MORE JOY 


was seen vainly trying to quench his thirst with 
a flowing stream which ebbed whenever he ap- 
proached it, has lately been seen in Paris, in 
New York, in Boston. He is now in great 
spirits; thinks he shall reach it yet; thinks he 
shall bottle the wave. It is however getting 
a little doubtful. Things have an ugly look still. 
No matter how many centuries of culture have 
preceded, the new man always finds himself 
standing on the brink of chaos, always in a crisis. 
Can anybody remember when the times were not 
hard, and money not scarce? Can anybody re- 
member when sensible men, and the right sort of 
men, and the right sort of women, were plentiful? 
Tantalus begins to think steam a delusion, and 
galvanism no better than it should be.”’ 1? 

A noxious culture has sickened mankind in 
body and soul. The realization of this fact is 
manifested in the high esteem now accorded the 
Science of hygiene. We need summon just one 
decisive witness, a witness greatly respected by 
the world and never contradicted, namely, Death. 
Death opens his record and shows the frightful 
increase in the number of suicides. "While men 
have been prating about the value of life, and 
about Joy in living, the rate of suicide in Europe 

11 Emerson, Society and Solitude: Essay on Works and Days. 


JOY AND THE AGE 23 


has been increasing by four hundred per cent, 
during the past fifty years,—the population 
meantime increasing by only sixty per cent. In 
Germany alone there are yearly about twelve 
thousand deserters from the army of life.” 
Who could imagine a more terrible satire on our 
boasted modern culture! And the real increase 
in the rate of suicide is far greater than the above 
figures show. Suicide is become so epidemic, 
that the Salvation Army, devising the most mod- 
ern form of social relief, has established Anti- 
suicide Bureaus in London, New York, Berlin, 
Chicago, and Melbourne, where would-be suicides 
are advised and, if possible, converted. 

12 According to the report for 1911, the U. 8. Census Bureau finds 
the suicide rate for that year to be 16.2 for each 100,000 of popula- 
tion in the registration-area. This rate applied to the total popula- 


tion would mean approximately 15,400 suicides in the United States 
in the year 1911. (Tr.) 


VEG 
MODERN DESTROYERS OF JOY 


In addition to the fact that modern culture is 
not of a nature to promote joy, it involves many 
things that directly disturb and destroy joy. 

True, our great technical progress and our in- 
ventions have in many respects lightened labor 
by passing the heaviest tasks over to machines. 
The external standards of living are higher than 
before. But the value of the progress we have 
made is greatly lessened by its effect upon all 
classes, in both their individual and their social 
life; for it has changed modern existence into a 
life of frightfully high pressure, a life of almost 
fatal intensity. It is as if steam, electricity, and 
all the powers and forces of nature yoked to hu- 
man service by machines and wires, were thus 
taking revenge upon man, driving him on in 
feverish haste and excitement his whole life 
long, and depriving him of all rest of mind and 


body. ‘‘We have become the slaves of the 
24 


MODERN DESTROYERS OF JOY 25 


monster that we ourselves created,’’ says Wil- 
liam Morris, the Socialist. 

This high-pressure life has begotten a peculiar 
modern infirmity, which is a joy destroyer of 
supreme efficiency, namely nervousness or neu- 
rasthenia. It afflicts the whole race in body, 
mind and will; and it robs our social life of all 
joy and cheerfulness. 

Despite every effort, despite all attempts of 
governments and philanthropists, the factories 
and machines of modern industry make the con- 
ditions of life and labor very hard for a great 
part of mankind. ‘‘I think it is probable,”’ says 
Chamberlain,* ‘‘that the nineteenth century was 
the most ‘pain-ful’ of all the ages, and that 
chiefly because of the sudden advent of the ma- 
chine.’’ 

It will not be necessary here to present a de- 
tailed picture of the life of many laborers and 
their families. There is no need of journeying 
through our monster industrial establishments 
in order to become acquainted with the grinding, 
often depressingly monotonous, tasks performed 
in the stifling air of the factory, or in the fiery 
atmosphere of the boiler room, or amid the 
frightful noise of trip-hammers, humming 

10Op. cit., IT, p. 363, 


26 MORE JOY 


wheels, rattling looms and buzzing bobbins. One 
needs no special training to be able to interpret 
what is written on so many pale and wrinkled 
faces. ‘This much is sure; it means anything but 
joy. 

No wonder! For modern industry has in 
great measure changed the nature of labor for 
the worse. It is the sad consequence of a prin- 
ciple practically very valuable, the division of 
labor. Unquestionably this principle brings 
great technical advantage; but it entails still 
greater disadvantages, physical and moral. It 
robs a man’s work of soul and spirit. No longer 
completing anything, his labor is limited to one 
minute service, to one small detail. It gives no 
Satisfaction ; it has become a servile task scarcely 
worthy of a human being. 

‘In an international exhibition,” relates A. von 
Gleichen-Russwurm, ‘‘I came upon a machine 
served by a dejected-looking operator. I do not 
know what the machine was making; I only know 
that it worked with most uncanny precision, 
doubling and folding something, as if with the 
skilful, unwavering hand of a giant, executing 
a task so complex that I could scarcely help re- 
garding the machine as a conscious being. On 
the other hand, the man who attended it was con- 


MODERN DESTROYERS OF JOY 27 


fined to the minimum of activity and mental 
work. He had merely to feed the rollers from 
time to time. If the machine seemed alive, 
its human vassal seemed dead, with no more 
life than a stone. Instead of inquiring about 
the nature of the machine, I stood there 
shocked at what I saw. Never had man’s great- 
ness and the hmits of his greatness been so clear 
tome. I saw a symbol of the age in the snatch- 
ing, grasping, infinitely dexterous hand of the 
machine, of which the dull gloomy-faced creature 
before me was but a tool. In behalf of our age, 
I tried to think of toiling people at work on the 
Egyptian pyramids, of weeping women pound- 
ing corn, and of similar monotonous industries 
of antiquity. but I could not get away from the 
conviction that the bitterest slavery of all is 
man’s slavery to the machine he has himself in- 
vented. It oppresses its creator and dominates 
even his thought with its ugly mastery. It is not 
comfort, nor easy work, that man desires; he is 
not so modest as that. To create, at least on a 
small scale, is his supreme aspiration, perhaps 
his curse. The materializing of work,—of all 
work and of all art,—is one of the most amazing 
incidents in the adventurous epic of our genera- 
tion. For, in his intercourse with the enslaved 


28 MORE JOY 


elements, whose hissing, snorting and whistling 
fills the great factories with such horrible hellish 
clamor, man undergoes an experience like that of 
the dwarfs, the legendary smiths and necroman- 
cers of olden times. He becomes savage, cruel, 
malicious, wild. He absorbs something of the 
fierceness, the antagonism, the irrepressible re- 
belliousness of these raging subject forces. After 
the ancient dragons had been exterminated, in- 
ventors constructed frightful new monsters 
whose breath is fire, whose claws tear a man to 
pieces. They may serve man; but they exact a 
stern price. Specialists may tell about the ma- 
terial significance of the industrial revolution; 
but no one can ever tell, or measure, the joy that 
has been destroyed in the gaining of each victory, 
the quiet contentment and splendid activity that 
has been done to death.’’ ? 

Ruskin well says: ‘‘It is not, truly speak- 
ing, the labor that is divided, but the men:— 
divided into mere segments of men—broken into 
small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all 
the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man 
is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts 
itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of 


2 Sieg der Freude. Hine Asthetik des praktischen Lebens, Stutt- 
gart, 1909, 383 f, 


MODERN DESTROYERS OF JOY 29 


a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, 
truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could 
only see with what crystal sand their points were 
polished,—sand of human soul, much to be mag- 
nified before it can be discerned for what it is,— 
we should think there might be some loss in it 
also. And the great cry that rises from all our 
manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace 
blast, is all in very deed for this,—that we manu- 
facture everything there except men; we blanch 
cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and 
shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to 
refine, or to form a single living spirit, never en- 
ters into our estimate of advantages.’’? 

To be sure, the factory and the machine are not 
alone responsible. A large share of responsibil- 
ity must be borne by that power which pushes 
itself forward as the best friend, the accredited 
champion, yea, as the emancipator, of labor. It 
has a gruesome interest in preventing the worker 
from being happy. It makes his discontent an 
object of financial speculation; converts his de- 
pression and his anger into steam-power for its 
paddle-wheels; makes the current of his tears 
turn its mills. This dismal philanthropist works 
systematically to root up the laborer’s peace, 


8 The Stones of Venice, II, ch. vi, § xvi. 


30 A PLEA FOR MORE JOY 


to make him rebel against what is unavoidable. 
It arouses hopes that can never be realized, and 
continually provokes and incites to covetousness 
in order to destroy the last hold of religion. 
The inevitable consequence for all who let them- 
Selves be guided, or rather misguided by it, is the 
destruction of their final remnant of happiness 
in living and in working. 

It is true that the discontent, the joylessness, 
of so many men makes us all suffer, that the 
gloomy cloud of their depression darkens the 
life of the whole race. ‘‘Seldom,’’ says Foerster, 
‘‘do we let ourselves appreciate how much each 
joy of ours is diminished by the thought of those 
shut out from it. Our very laughter is half 
stifled. Our loudest mirth is half artificial, and, 
in the last analysis, implies self-deception rather 
than spontaneous joy. Even the most superficial 
man falls under the blight. If his soul is not dis- 
turbed by the social contrast, still the lamenta- 
tions on the street pierce his ears; he sees starv- 
ing, defiant faces; he misses the look of common 
Joy; and he is bothered about what is thought and 
felt underneath the surface. Man is a social be- 
ing, not a dog to gnaw his bone in the corner. 
All his true joy is conditioned by the joy of oth- 
ers. lor a laugh there must be deep peace of 


MODERN DESTROYERS OF JOY 31 


mind and conscience; because real laughter 
springs out of the depths, from dried tears and 
broken fetters and slain selfishness. We are 
suspicious of our own laughter, if others remain 
mute; joy is a chorus. To-day we no longer 
know what joy really is; nor shall we ever know, 
_ until technical progress and social organization 
will have adjusted the great crisis caused by mon- 
strous industrial expansion, and higher ideals of 
life will have come again to bless the whole hu- 
man company of workers.’’ ‘ 

‘The life of the people seems o be abel 
robbed of joy. Country life is now joyless; and, 
despite all outward glitter, life in the great ties 
is utterly without joy. We may think Emer- 
son’s description somewhat exaggerated, and yet 
we cannot help recognizing many true details in 
his drastic criticism: ‘‘In our large cities the 
population is godless, materialized,—no bond, no 
fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not 
men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers and appetites 
walking. How is it people manage to live on,— 
so aimless as they are? After their pepper-corn 
aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their 
bones alone held them together, and not for any 
worthy purpose. There is no faith in the intel- 

¢ Ohristentum und Klassenkampf, Ziirich, 1908, 247 f. 


32 MORE JOY 


lectual, none in the moral universe. There is 
faith in chenustry, in meat and wine, in wealth, 
in machinery, in the steam-engine, galvanic bat- 
tery, turbine-wheels, sewing-machines, and in 
public opinion, but not in the divine causes.’’® 

Change continual and uncontrolled, confine- 
ment, discomfort, crowding, lack of privacy,— 
all the conditions prevalent in great cities, inter- 
fere still further with that family sociability and 
intimacy which the spirit of the age has already 
so largely weakened. 

‘*]t is but a small proportion of the population 
of a great city which is able to maintain privacy 
of domestic arrangement and to train those senti- 
ments and traditions which gather about a home. 
The great proportion of the city’s population 
are industrial nomads, likely any day to fold 
their tents like Arabs and migrate to some better 
market for their labor or their wares; and, of 
these, a pitifully large proportion have not even 
tents to detain them, and herd together in the ac- 
cidental companionship of the lodging-house, the 
tenement, and the street... . The Roman fam- 
ily had its symbol of continuity in the sacred fire, 
burning on the ancestral hearth; but it is not 
without difficulty that this sense of a sacred and 

5 The Conduct of Life, ch. vi. 


MODERN DESTROYERS OF JOY 33 


permanent unity can be maintained round the 
cooking-stove of the tenement, the hot-air regis- 
ter of the boarding-house, or even the steam- 
radiator of the apartment-hotel.’’® Where this 
sacred fire of family union and family affection 
is burning, how many joys are radiating, how 
- warm and wholesome is the atmosphere! Where 
it has been extinguished, how cold and inhos- 
pitable everything seems to be! 


_ 8 Jesus Christ and the Social Question, by Francis Greenwood Pea- 
body, New York, 1900, p. 164, f. 


IV 


TOO MANY PLEASURES AND TOO 
LITTLE JOY 


But how is this alleged decline of joy to be ree- 
onciled with the actual multiplication of forms, 
kinds, occasions, contrivances and establishments 
of entertainment and amusement, and with the 
steady increase in the use of these? How does 
it fit in with Sunday excursions, summer-outings, 
mountain-trips, sports, social and festive organ- 
izations, theatres, concert-halls, cheap shows and 
cabarets ? 

The vast number of these things is really noth- 
ing but another proof that men are totally bank- 
rupt with regard to joy. It is impossible not to 
be sick at heart when we observe the sort of pleas- 
ures provided for the people and the use made of 
them on holidays. Alcohol and lewdness are the 
focus of interest and the high-water mark of en- 
joyment. Not to set too austere a standard in 
this matter, let us listen to the excuse offered by 


Lange: ‘‘Very often, indeed, what seems to be 
34 


TOO MANY PLEASURES 35 


noisy or senseless joy in frivolous amusements is 
nothing but a result of immoderate, galling, and 
brutalising labor, since the mind, by perpetual 
hurrying and scurrying in the service of money- 
making, loses the capacity for a purer, nobler and 
calmly devised enjoyment.... That such a 
_ state of things is not healthy, and can hardly 
exist permanently, seems obvious.’’? 

With regret rather than condemnation, we e note 
that the kind of enjoyment which for centuries 
satisfied our people’s need of beauty and relaxa- 
tion, is too insipid for most of us nowadays. 
Love of nature, conversation, play, family-read- 
ing, folk-games, folk-songs mean nothing at all 
to the great majority of people. The nervous 
system, partly numb and partly over irritated, 
demands more elaborate amusements. Hence 
the reigning favorite is alcohol, that base impos- 
tor with its twofold lying promise of removing 
life’s burdens and restoring life’s strength and 
joy. Things have gone so far that many people 
now can hardly think of pleasure or a holiday, 
without alcohol; and take it as a matter of course 
that a picnic should end with general intoxica- 

1 History of Materialism and Criticism of Its Present Importance, 


by Frederick Albert Lange, Authorized Translation by Ernest Ches- 
ter Thomas, Boston, 1881, vol. III, p. 238. 


36 MORE JOY 


tion. But the bill for this must one day be paid 
in coin of joy and of life. After a Sunday or a 
holiday passed thus, the poor workman or artisan 
returns to the frightful monotony of his worka- 
day existence with a heavy head, a heavier con- 
science, and a further deficit of strength and 
joy. 

Not only among the lower classes, but in the 
higher circles also, we can verify the correctness 
of Hilty’s observation: ‘*Most of the happiness 
and still more of the gayety of the world 1s of no 
use to mature persons, except to help them for a 
few hours to forget what otherwise would be un- 
endurable, and what even now, at times, fills them 
with deep melancholy and almost with despair. 
Theatres, concert-halls and other places of 
amusement live on this fact. It is not the thirst 
for pleasure, nor the artistic sense alone, that 
builds and supports them. The real motive for 
sociability and social activity is to avoid being 
left alone with ourselves and our thoughts. And 
the attraction of alcohol is so irresistible, not 
because it supplies pleasure to a multitude whose 
only aim in life is pleasure, but rather because it 
drives away care and is the River Lethe of the 
modern world. For this reason all the physical 
demonstrations of its harmfulness make no im- 


TOO MANY PLEASURES 37 


pression on its faithful disciples. Were it uni- 
versally recognized as poison, they would still 
take 1t; not because it is a delightful poison, but 
because it induces stupefaction. If Nietzsche 
ever wrote one true word, it was this, ‘Not joy 
but Joylessness is the mother of dissipation.’ ’’ 2 

Equally true is Ruskin’s saying that every- 
where in the world a frail barrier separates bois- 
terous joy from dumb despair. At first, indeed, 
alcohol’s false joy resembles true joy; the heart 
beats more strongly, the course of the blood 
quickens, the eye sparkles. But we must not for- 
get that in addition to that circulation of the 
blood which bestows life-giving heat and energy, 
there is another kind which comes from fever 
and consumes life’s energies. 

Regarded as causes of joy, the social amuse- 
ments of so-called cultured people do not deserve 
to be valued highly. There is too much conven- 
tional deceit, too much pretense, too much forced 
politeness, too much varnished merriment. 
‘Life would be endurable but for its pleasures,’’ 
is a phrase attributed to Lord Palmerston. A 
desire for the vacations formerly reserved ex- 
clusively to the upper classes, grows more and 


2 Das Glick, III, 113. The first and second series of these essays 
are published in English by the Macmillan Company. (Tr.) 


38 MORE JOY 


more common among the people. The ever- 
spreading rush to the mountains doubtless entails 
many good results. It carries men away from the 
deadly city air to a purer atmosphere and better 
company, to the great sanitarium of nature, the 
Alpine world. Unfortunately, the more that sort 
of thing gets to be a fashion and a sport, the 
smaller is the gain in true appreciation and sim- 
ple enjoyment of nature; and the greater is the 
danger that even the natural mountain people 
and the natural mountain world will be modern- 
ized, contaminated, and made unhappy. Jour- 
neys to far countries and to regions of magnifi- 
cent beauty will make many a person blasé and 
irresponsive to the appeal of nature’s simpler 
Scenes, and to the peculiar charm always pos- 
sessed by one’s native land when visited with af- 
fection. 

Walter shows clearly the unnatural relation 
of modern man tonature: ‘There is now astate 
of absolute divorce between culture and nature. 
Great cities of vast extent, with monstrous piles 
of masonry and congested populations, make 
communion with nature impossible. Life and 
labor develop within the walls of the workshop, 
the cramped dwelling, the office, the school. The 
city child is but a hot-house plant, not so much a 


TOO MANY PLEASURES 39 


child as a human being matured by artificial 
methods. Man cannot with impunity hold aloof 
from the pleasures nature provides; if he pos- 
Sesses no power of enjoying nature, he is to be 
pitied. 

‘‘The true relationship with nature has been 
- completely lost. Educated men no longer know 
how to commune with nature. Trustful, broth- 
erly, common life has disappeared, and esteem 
for the blessings and gifts of nature has in great 
measure passed away. When, for a few hours 
or days, the city-dweller breaks loose from his 
dusty prison, he hurls himself on nature like a 
Savage; he comes down like a barbarian on the 
blossoming trees and shining corn-fields to 
plunder them. An excursion of city people often 
resembles a raid to sack and pillage the country. 
The excursionists fall into a sort of intoxication, 
the very opposite of real delight in nature. It is 
a sure proof of their alienation from what is 
natural. Look at them coming home after their 
day’s outing, laden with flowers and leaves and 
blossoms, trying to satisfy their craving for na- 
ture by carrying some of her charms back into 
their dwellings, but with never a thought of the 
ravished fields.’’ ® 

8 Kélnische Volkszeitung, vom 12 Jul; 1908. 


y 
JOY AND ART 


There are certain elements of culture adapted 
and destined to beautify life and lift it above the 
common wretched level. Even these fail us mis- 
erably in our present battle for joy. Itis so, for 
instance, with all the various forms and branches 
GE Art: 

Certainly it is not to be reckoned among the 
merits of the art and literature of the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries that so many of the 
masters and the productions have helped to di- 
minish rather than increase joy; that they have 
missed. their supreme vocation, namely, to glad- 
den human hearts and to create the sunshine of 
life. ‘To-day this vocation is largely repudiated. 
According to modern esthetics, art must be with- 
out purpose, or rather must be a purpose unto 
itself. It seems utterly useless to dispute about 
this shadowy phantom, the purposelessness of 
art. That it can still haunt us only shows how 


far away from lifeart has gone. For this theory 
40 


JOY AND ART 41 


of the purposelessness of art is not born of actual 
experience, nor sprung of any ardent creative 
artistic spirit. It is a mere empty abstraction 
fashioned in the bloodless brains of theorists and 
doctrinaires; and it will go out of vogue far more 
quickly than it came in. 

The real master spirits, recognized even by the 
modern world, have a very different conception 
of the purpose of art. Years ago Goethe la- 
mented that in literature ‘‘high aims, genuine 
love for the true and the fair, and the desire of 
diffusing them are all absent.’?* What would 
he say of an art and a literature that positively 
disavow all such aims? ‘The advocates of pur- 
poselessness are opposed by Schiller who in the 
Introduction to the Bride of Messina, when dis- 
cussing the use of the chorus in tragedy, lays 
down this principle: ‘‘All art is dedicated to 
joy, nor is there any higher or nobler task than 
to make men happy. That alone is true art 
which affords the highest delight. But the soul’s 
highest delight is found in the free exercise of 
all its powers. ... Serious, and yet disagree- 
able, is the impression made on us by poets and 
artists who merely reproduce material realities ; 


1Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, Translated by S. M. 
Fuller, Boston and Cambridge, 1852, p. 152, | 


42 MORE JOY 


we feel ourselves painfully thrust back among 
the petty, common things by the very art which 
ought to liberate us.”’ 

In one of Haydn’s letters we read, ‘‘Often, 
when struggling with obstacles opposed to my 
works—often when strength failed me and it was 
difficult for me to persevere in the course upon 
which I had entered—a secret feeling whispered 
to me, ‘there are so few joyful and contented 
people here below; everywhere there is trouble 
and care; perchance your labor sometime may 
be the source from which those burdened with 
care may derive a moment’s relief.’ ’’? Senti- 
ments like these are worth much more than dec- 
lamation about art’s being a purpose to itself; 
they honor the artist and help the people; and 
they surely further the cause of true art. 

Although the aim of art is to make people 
cheerful and happy, neither in Schiller’s mind 
nor in ours is the field of art restricted to the 
bright and joyful things of life, excluding all 
Serious themes and tragic materials. All we de- 
mand is this, that when art does turn to the seamy 
side of life, when it affirms something serious or 
reproduces something terrible, when it paints 


2 Life of Haydn, by Louis Nohl, Translated from the German by 
George P. Upton, Chicago, 1883, p. 181. 


JOY AND. ART 43 


gloomy things in dark colors, or even dips its 
brush in blood, it must not altogether omit the 
encouraging stroke, the explaining word, the 
saving thought, which liberate, quicken, enrich 
and cheer the soul of listener and spectator. An 
art which has lost all sense of this duty and rejects 
these demands as beneath it, will never be a bless- 
ing to mankind and will never find its way into 
the heart of the people. Feeble, decadent, shut 
out from every living, pulsating interest, it will 
remain sitting on the lonely perch of its own aim- 
lessness. 

True, to-day we have also that kind of art 
which uplifts and gladdens. It is the noble 
friend and helper of worried humanity, of the af- 
flicted people. Religious art, which is especially 
destined and equipped to fulfil this function, 
never wholly dies out. Even at the present time, 
despite the unfavorable conditions of life, it 
achieves great things. A literature also, which 
is essentially Christian and fears not the dread 
reproach of having some definite object or “‘ten- 
dency,’’ has acquired a good modern technique, at 
the same time excluding everything unhealthy in 
sentiment or expression, and is favoring us con- 
stantly with delightful gifts. Modern painting 
has done much to nourish and stimulate apprecia- 


44 | MORE JOY 


tion and love of nature. Landscape painting is 
its darling child. The whole drift of the age, the 
rapid advance of the natural sciences, the sharp- 
ening of men’s powers of observation, the im- 
provement in technique, the finer sense of color, 
—all these influences urge in the same direction. 
No longer does the painter look for what is inter- 
esting or vast in nature; he prefers what is in- 
significant, obscure, austere, or crude. He likes 
to awaken men to a recognition of the modest 
charms and latent poetry of plains and meadows, 
fields frozen and hushed under ice and snow, 
meads bathed in noonday light, shining stretches 
of water, woods shot through with straying sun- 
beams, drifting morning clouds and thickening 
twilight,—and so to do is, in the highest degree, 
good and praiseworthy. 

Modern architecture too, gives a good sign in 
its refusal to be concerned exclusively with mon- 
ster constructions, in its manifestation of sincere 
and enthusiastic interest in the problem of build- 
ing real homesteads and thus promoting healthy 
and happy family life. 

These efforts should be encouraged by every 
possible means. Away with the superstition that 
comfortable homes are the privilege of the rich 
and must be bought at a great price. How taste- 


JOY AND ART 45 


less, uncomfortable, and cheerless is many an 
aristocratic dwelling; how homelike and inviting 
many a peasant’s cottage in the Black Forest, the 
Algau, or the Tyrol! For the making of a com- 
fortable, pleasant family home, where joy will 
_ reside as a willing guest, there is required only 
that simplicity and natural fitness which of them- 
selves make beauty. ‘The great secret is the care- 
ful adjustment of the living rooms; the furniture 
may be ever so plain, if only harmonious and well 
placed. No! homes do not need to be palaces that 
joy may dwell therein. In how many palaces is 
joy only a fleeting guest! 

Nor must we esteem lightly the progress made 
by the reproductive arts. By their aid what is 
fairest and best of the creations of every epoch 
becomes the common property of all, in the form 
of copies fully. as beautiful as the originals. 
This helps us to forget the poverty of present- 
day art and also to a certain extent makes up its 
deficit of joy. 

Well may we use these gifts from the art treas- 
ures of the past, for strictly modern art and lit- 
erature offer very little that is pleasant. Medi- 
eval art was warm and pure, gay with color and 
with youth, deep of soul and popular. To-day, 
art is often so frigid, unclean, stale, insipid, that, 


46 MORE JOY 

in Goethe’s words, it sickens the soul. HEvery- 
body has heard about the ejaculation made by 
some visitor to a modern exhibition of paintings: 
‘‘Oh, that my eyes could vomit!”’ 

We are, of course, leaving wholly out of con- 
sideration that kind of art and literature 
which, as with Circe’s magic wand, brutalizes all 
who frequent its company; which serves up in 
silver platters, not merely what Goethe calls “*po- 
tatoes,’’ but the husks of swine; which, in obedi- 
ence to a perverted instinct, cultivates the hor- 
rible, the vicious, the bestial, and covers all that 
is great and holy with its loathsome slime; which 
in the words of a modern esthete, ‘‘likes to root 
around in moral misery and takes special delight 
in sniffing out with abnormally developed nose 
the different kinds and varieties of moral 
stenches.’’* This sort of art destroys not only 
joy, but the very soul itself. It tempts thou- 
sands to look and read themselves to death. 
Such art is a crime against the human race; it 1s 
murderous. ‘The pens that serve it are doing the 
work of hell. Calamus calamitatum auctor! 

But even those among modern artists who are 
free from such fatal tendencies, destroy much 
joy by their crass realism, their pessimism, their 

8 Volkelt, Asthetische Zeitfragen, Miinchen, 1895. 


JOY AND ART 47 


fatalism. True, there is some justification for 
realism in its improved sense of actuality, its 
honesty, its sincerity. It is better than an af- 
fected, insincere, studied kind of art. But real- 
ism becomes unhealthy and perverse, if it re- 
gards as most real the things which are vile and 
~ common and ugly,—the scum of life,—and lives 
and works for them alone. Is human life real 
only when base and vile, but not when good and 
noble? ‘‘To be sincere, must one be brutal, 
fleshly, cynical? Is the scum of life real and 
not its deeper waters? Is the mud real and not 
the star? Is there, in a word, any fundamental 
issue between the real and the ideal; or is the 
ideal the most real of human possessions, and 
are the best interpreters of reality the ideal- 
ists?’’* The people in their thinking, feeling 
and willing, combine realism and idealism, and 
only by an art which knows how to combine 
these, can men be satisfied, instructed, and up- 
lifted. 

Goethe, in his day, coined a good name for a 
certain school of poetry. He called it ‘*hospital- 
poetry’’ and said: 

‘* All the poets write as if they were sick, and 


4Francis G. Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, 
New York, 1905, p. 224. 


48 MORE JOY 


the whole world a lazaretto. All speak of the 
miseries of this life, and the joys of the other; 
and each malcontent excites still greater dissat- 
isfaction in his neighbors. This is a sad abuse 
of poetry, which was given us to smooth away 
the rough places of life, and make man satisfied 
with the world and his situation. The present 
generation fears all genuine power, and is only 
at home and poetical amid weakness.” ° 

How well Goethe anticipated that typically 
modern tendency of art and literature to ‘‘dance 
dolefully around a little mound of misery,’’ to 
gloat over the nastiest and filthiest scenes, to rave 
enthusiastically about the dull, the inane, the 
commonplace,—and thus to waste and weaken 
the life of men and nations. Goethe was right. 
Those who probe pitilessly into misery and pose 
as Supermen are the poorest heroes of all. They 
are weaklings, incapable of helping either them- 
selves or others. Nietzsche gave out this fine 
phrase: ‘‘Cast not the hero in thy soul away,”’ 
but unfortunately he did not follow his own ad- 
vice, and his disciples are still less faithful to it. 

The people can get little joy from an art which 
is contemptuously indifferent as to subjects 
chosen and means employed, and concerns itself 


5 Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, p. 236. 


JOY AND ART 49 


solely about form and technique. The people 
will not be satisfied with mere artistic form, nor 
interested in painters’ experiments and delicate 
questions of light-effects. Their eyes are too 
normal, their palate is too natural, their taste is 
_ too unspoiled, for that. They want an art with 
a spiritual content, an art offering something not 
only to the eye, but to the heart as well. The art 
of a people must be based upon moral and spirit- 
ual principles, not on mere color values and il- 
lusions. 

Much is made of the democratic tendency of 
art and many believe that by means of it, art and 
true appreciation of art will again find a way to 
the heart of the people. To be sure, art is not 
to be reproached for devoting itself to the fourth 
estate, to the machinist, the plowman, the pro- 
letarian, any more than fiction is to be reproached 
when it leaves the salon for the workshop and 
the peasant’s hut. Human life is full of inter- 
est always, and not only when it rustles in silken 
garments, glides over polished floors, envelops 
itself in perfumes and lives upon oysters and 
champagne. Yet everything depends upon 
the purpose of art in attempting to get down to 
the common people. If it aims to exploit misery, 
hunger, and filth, as a novel means for the stimu- 


50 MORE JOY 


lation of dulled nerves, it scarcely deserves 
praise. If it aims to raise the prevalent discon- 
tent to a higher pitch, to stir up hate and jeal- 
ousy, it acts criminally; it becomes a socialistic 
agitator, a dangerous anarchist. If, like a guard- 
ian angel, it descends to console, to uplift, to 
gladden, then it is really doing a great good work. 

It is able to do this, only when it takes to heart 
Leonardo’s words, ‘‘There can be no great art 
without a true love of man.’’ Art must love the 
people, and its love must be founded upon respect 
for them, upon knowledge of their worth and sig- 
nificance. This might be learned even from 
Goethe who says of the peasantry: ‘Our peas- 
ants have always retained a goodly amount of 
strength; and we may hope that for a long time 
to come, they will be able not only to provide us 
with sturdy troopers, but also to preserve us (and 
joy) from utter decay and ruin. We may look 
upon them as a reserve for the continual renew- 
ing and refreshing of mankind’s declining 
strength. Buta visit to the great cities will give 
one very different feelings.’’?® When modern 
art chooses epileptics, consumptives and drunk- 
ards as its heroes, introducing them into novels 
and upon the stage, and immortalizing them 


6 Gespriche mit Eckermann, 552. 


JOY AND ART ol 


on canvas, it is showing neither respect nor 
affection for the people. Surely that is not 
the way to make men healthier and happier. 
Quite rightly Lorenz Krapp points out the 
very different path followed by folk poetry: 
‘Throughout the folk-song, it is kings and 
heroes, gentle ladies and daring warriors, dying 
princes, youths and maidens, who march along, 
making merry in the sunshine of the May.’’’ 
The people are more delighted and uplifted by 
this kind of art than by that which vulgarizes 
their life and paints for them exaggerated pic- 
tures of their own misery. The attempt to bring 
art back to the people is certainly praiseworthy. 
But unfortunately modern efforts to achieve this, 
have usually proceeded from men with no ade- 
quate idea of the people’s needs. To inject a 
charge of carbonic gas into an artistic beverage 
is not enough to make it popular. 

The people’s poverty in art and appreciation 
of art is most clearly shown by the present dry- 
ing up of the fountain of folk-song which once 
Spontaneously bubbled up out of the popular life. 


7 Gottesminne, 1905, 201. 


VI 
JOY AND THE FOLK-SONG 


The Folk-song! The press has been disputing 
as to whether or not it is still alive. Quite dead 
indeed, it is not; for it can never wholly die. 
But that it is no longer what it was, that at pres- 
ent it exists in a way which by contrast might 
be called death, nobody willdeny. True, the peo- 
ple still sing,—especially the Christian people 
when at church. There the folk-song is still 
alive. There it is always busily occupied, weav- 
ing the highest and noblest kind of joy into the 
people’s lives, by means of soulful music, an old 
heritage of verse, melodies and harmonies that 
display the road to heaven. 

On other occasions, too, the people still do 
some singing, but so seldom and so poorly, that 
it sounds like their swan-song. They still sing 
now and then, in the country, in the woods and 
fields, on Sundays, and at household tasks; but, 
outside of this, almost never, except in saloons, 
at recruiting stations, and in the army. They no 

62 


JOY AND THE FOLK-SONG 355) 


longer sing the folk-songs that we heard thirty or 
forty years ago. Now, we hear only coarse 
drinking songs and obscene rhymes that voice not 
the soul of a people but the mad spirit of alcohol, 
songs composed of mingled foolishness and lust, 
street-songs, the latest melodies, arias picked up 
in music-halls and low theatres,—all these re- 
peated over and over again to the point of nausea 
and then cast aside for others still more banal and 
lascivious, if possible. Speaking of the songs 
sung by recruits and soldiers, a prominent news- 
paper recently observed : ‘‘Many of them not only 
border on vulgarity, but are essentially vulgar.”’ 

How do the people sing nowadays? Often 
with such shocking crudeness and nearly always 
with such unspeakable sadness, that one’s heart 
is torn with pity and sympathy for the poor sick 
soul of the people thus unconsciously voicing its 
pain. True, there was always a strain of melan- 
choly in the German folk-song, owing, as Foers- 
ter observes, to the fact that the soul of the peo- 
ple, with its simple outlook, interprets life more 
deeply and truly than so-called educated men are 
able to do.* But the pathos of the old folk-song 
was quite different from this present sadness. It 
burst out of the depths of the soul, ran gaily up 

1 Jugendlehre, 55. 


o4: MORE JOY 


the scale, readily embraced wit and joy and broke 
gladly into laughter. It gave the over-burdened 
the relief of song and admonished merry folk to 
be discreet lest joy should be changed into sor- 
row. 

The melancholy remnant of the folk-song lacks 
both proper gravity and wit. ‘*What has hap- 
pened to the German laugh ?”’ asks Ernst v. Wil- 
denbruch. ‘‘Germany was once a merry land 
and Germans could laugh as heartily as other 
races,—aye, more loudly than any. What has 
become of it all? The guffaw of the great city 
applauding imported stage-wit, drowns out the 
laugh of the German people. What with the 
poorhouse smell of our naturalistic social writ- 
ings, and the very offensive odor emanating 
from our modern feminist literature, the laugh 
has vanished from the face of Germany. Fur- 
rows and wrinkles have come that used to be 
unknown, hiding-places of depression, anxiety, 
weariness. Oh! if he would but waken once 
again, that loud-laughing carl, the German wag! 
So that our people might grow glad laughing at 
themselves; that they might laugh themselves 
back to health; that they might laugh out 
of their souls all sulkiness and contention and 
bitterness and irritability; that once again they 


JOY AND THE FOLK-SONG 55 


might look out upon the world with dancing | 
eyes!’’ 

Death has overtaken that folk-song which once 
accompanied every footstep of the German peo- 
ple, the comrade of their journeys, and the tent- 
mate of their travels, their jolly friend in com- 
pany and amusements, their comforter in time of 
trouble, and especially their trusted partner and 
tried helper in daily work. In this last respect 
above all, singing assisted wonderfully to per- 
meate life with joy and to lighten the yoke of 
labor. Extremely interesting researches have 
lately shown that work and play and art were all 
originally combined in a single phase of human 
activity, the three being bound together with 
pleasure-giving rhythm as in poetry, music, danc- 
ing. This alliance of work and rhythm lasted 
down through the centuries, contributing to the 
well-being of the people and the general spread 
of joy. It received the blessing of Christianity 
which from the beginning intertwined with labor 
““nsalms and hymns and spiritual canticles’’ ac- 
cording to the admonition of the apostle.’ 

‘‘The discovery of numberless facts,’’ says K. 
Biicher, ‘‘has reconstructed in the depths of hu- 
man history a submerged world,—the world of 

2 Hph. v. 18 ff. 


56 MORE JOY 


cheerful labor. The economist who for the first 
time sets foot in this world, rubs his eyes incred- 
ulously, for he seems to have been transported by 
a miracle into the Utopia described in political 
romances. Here labor is not a burden, not a 
hard lot, not a marketable merchandise; it is not 
organized by cold calculation. The further he 
goes in this new world, the more astonished he 
becomes. Everywhere play and pleasure, song 
and glad shouting, sociability and codperation,— 
a sort of economic child-life.”’ 

But nowadays, he continues, the world of cheer- 
ful labor is largely submerged in the sea of cul- 
ture, like an ancient continent covered by the 
ocean. Here and there among us some lonely 
island rock may still lift its head; but it is only 
amid the backward peoples that any considerable 
stretch of land remains to be seen. The rest- 
lessness and hurry of our life, the chaining of 
so great a part of human labor to machines, 
confinement in the factory and many another 
cause have banished the folk-song from the realm 
of labor. ‘‘Of what avail is the human voice 
against whirring wheels and buzzing transmitters 

8 Arbeit und Rhythmus 4 (1909) ; Nigele, Ueber Arbeits lieder bei 


Johannes Chrysostomus (Berichte der philol.-histor. Klasse der kel. 
siichs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Leipzig, 1905). 


JOY AND THE FOLK-SONG 57 


and all the indescribable noises that fill the aver- 
age workroom, making comfort impossible??? * 

We must be careful not to underrate the grav- 
ity of our loss of the folk-song. What we have 
really lost in it and with it, is clearly demonstra- 
ted by the thorough, yet delicately sympathetic, 
researches of Otto Bokel. One must be either 
very cynical or very superficial, if one can per- 
ceive in the folk-song nothing more than a naive 
form of popular entertainment, or poetry of too 
low a form to be quite consistent with high cul- 
ture. One who looks deeper will discover in it 
the genius of a people. No less an authority than 
Goethe rated the poetic content of folk-song 
highly; and its moral, disciplinary, and educa- 
tional value is greater still, Welling up out of 
the depths of the people’s life, it reacts in turn 
upon them with elemental force, charming, start- 
ling, freeing, uplifting, gladdening them. It is . 
pervaded by a healthy optimism. Even when 
dominated by melancholy and sadness, it still at- 
tempts to light up the darker side of existence 
and to resolve life’s discords into harmony.’ It 
contains a powerful religious element; and 
through its warp are woven the strong threads 


4Op. cit., 439. 
5 Psychologie der Volksdichtung, Leipzig, 1906. 


08 MORE JOY 


of a pure and healthy moral sense. Faith and 
trust in God, joy in work, love of country, home- 
love, mother-love, family affection, conjugal de- 
votion, are its rich, dominant notes; and like an 
undertone is heard the laugh of humor and rip- 
pling merriment. 

Itself a child of nature, the folk-song draws 
its best inspiration from nature. It plunges into 
nature whole-heartedly; learns the words and 
notes that conjure up natural beauties and joys 
and fears; and brings these close to the people’s 
heart. ‘‘In folk-poetry the descriptions of na- 
ture are almost always brief, but delicately 
Shaded. They include only what is essential. 
The children of nature live and move in what 
Surrounds them and they have no need of detailed 
descriptions. The poet may safely assume 
that a few bold strokes will make his picture live 
- In the souls of his hearers and his fellow-singers. 
Hence the beauty of the nature-scenes in a folk- 
Song can be appreciated fully only by those whose 
souls are on the same plane as the singer’s. He 
who cannot give himself up with perfect sym- 
pathy to the enjoyment of flashing sunbeams or 
of colors playing upon a cloud, who never feels 
his soul overflow with ecstasy at the song of birds 
and the fragrance of flowers, is not one of the 


JOY AND THE FOLK-SONG o9 


elect to whom the full charm of folk-poetry will 
be disclosed. He will never be able to see the 
perfect beauty of living nature in the delicately 
outlined descriptions.’’ ® 

There is still another characteristic of the folk- 
song, namely, its persistence, its almost inde- 
structible vitality. Hven amid the most unfav- 
orable circumstanees, it yields only slowly; step 
by step. When despised and persecuted, it with- 
draws by degrees, farther and farther,—first 
from town to country, and then still farther into 
the hills. If rejected by adults, it will still, for 
a long time, find a refuge among children. It 
survives wars and catastrophes, and, century 
after century, renews its youth. 

Why is it dying out now? Nothing short of a 
radical transformation of the world could have 
brought it to the point of death. The fact is 
there are no longer any natural folk; and this is 
why there is no longer any folk-song. Culture 
knows only artistic poetry. ‘‘The folk-song 
loves the still nooks where peace and quiet reign. 
The noisy new age frightens it away into soli- 
tude. As the elves of old fled at the sound of a 
_ bell, so the folk-song vanishes before the steam 
of the locomotive and the smoke of the factory 

@ Ibid., 234. 


60 MORE JOY 


chimney. The old native folk-song is scared 
away by advancing culture. Here and there, a 
stray child of the folk-muse, like a frightened 
fawn, with startled eyes, looks out from some 
thicket at the wonderfully changed world, 
smoky, noisy, never resting. But with this oc- 
casional exception, the folk-song has disappeared 
from the world.’’* 

According to Bokel, this disappearance indi- 
cates a slow decay of the people’s soul and 
leaves a lack which cannot be filled with all the 
goods that culture brings. He thinks, however, 
that it may be possible for us to restore the van- 
ishing folk-song. Can it ever be revived to 
perfect health? We must not rely too much on 
recent loud appeals to ‘‘Save the Folk-song!’’,§ 
nor on Folk-song Associations, nor on the culti- 
vation of the folk-song by the schools and sing- 
ing societies which for so long a time so loftily 
ignored it. The evil is now too deeply rooted. 
In the modern world the folk-song has as many 
enemies as the song-bird. 

Unquestionably, there is here a relation of 
cause and effect. With the death of the folk- 

T Ibid., 416. 


8H. Eschelbach, Rettet das Volklied, Berlin; and Der Niedergang 
des Volksgesanges, Neuwied. 


JOY AND THE FOLK-SONG 61 


song, there disappears from the life of the people 
a considerable portion of their joy; and, in the 
measure that joy goes out of the people’s life, 
the folk-song decays. With the folk-song will 
disappear folk-poetry, for they live and die to- 
gether. 


At the flame of the song the heart of the hearer was kindled, 

At the heart of the hearer nourished the singer his flame; 

Nourished and purified it. Happiest he of all singers, 

To whom in the voice of the people clear echoed the soul of 
his song.® 


® Schiller, Die Sanger der Vorwelt, 


VII 
JOY AND YOUTH 


And now we must set down the saddest fact 
of all,—that joy is lacking even among children 
and young people, among those to whom it has 
always been conceded as a right and to whom 
it 1s as necessary as daily bread, as necessary as 
sunlight is to the flower or pollen to the bee. 

We can present no statistical evidence of this. 
But it is well known to all who are in the slight- 
est degree familiar with child-psychology, who 
even half notice the movements of the child’s lit- 
tle world, who know how to read the faces of 
children and the eyes of young people. Anyone 
whose heart is open to the little ones finds cause 
for deep distress in the recent rapid spread 
among them of precocious cynicism, bitterness, 
discontent, coarseness, boldness and vulgarity. 
far beyond their years, of misdeeds and crimes 
and even of suicide. At the same time we find 


that the sunny merriment and the cheerfulness 
62 


JOY AND YOUTH 63 


which radiate from eye to eye and from heart to 
heart, are distressingly rare. 

But frankly now, can this be wondered at, 
when even the family,—the cell of the social or- 
ganism, in both State and Church,—has begun 
_ to disintegrate, and multitudes of poor children 
are deprived of their protecting refuge and their 
garden of joy! Hundreds of poor mothers,— 
and the mother must be considered first when 
there is question of the child’s joy,—have now 
no time for their children; they must be at the 
factory. Hundreds of rich mothers have now no 
time for their children; they must discharge 
their tedious ‘‘social duties,’’ they must take 
part in public life, deliver addresses at conven- 
tions and the like. Poor children of the fac- 
tory-workman and his wife! Poor children of 
the modern, emancipated, speech-making, book- 
writing mother! Poor city children, into whose 
life there falls no ray of heaven’s sunshine, no 
ray of the sunshine of joy; who are acquainted 
only with the joys picked up in the filthy gutters 
and sewers of sin! 

After a babyhood empty of joy, or nearly so, 
the little citizen enters school, where he finds an- 
other world hardly richer in happiness. The 
modern school, especially the public school, is 


64 MORE JOY 


the apple of our eye, the petted darling of society. 
To express any doubt as to its perfection, to op- 
pose its development, is looked upon as treason, 
as a crime, an infamy. And yet, of late, the Op- 
ponents of modern education have been growing 
more numerous and they do not all come from 
the camp of the ‘‘reactionary’’ Catholics. 

In his book Jugendlehre, which circulated so 
rapidly throughout all Germany, F. W. Foerster 
starts from the thesis that the modern school is 
a replica of modern life, reproducing its defects 
and faults. In the old days the central interest 
of education was a Christian training and every- 
thing else was subordinated to that. In the mod- 
ern school, there is no such unity, no such con- 
Scious cooperation in the building up of charac- 
ter, for the reason that we are still under the spell 
of the great eighteenth-century illusion that pop- 
ular education necessarily entails popular moral- 
ity, that moral culture is a by-product of intel- 
lectual enlightenment. ‘‘Whoever is familiar 
with life, knows how little of real culture resides 
in mere knowledge, aye, that growth in mere 
knowledge may hurt us, may puff us up, unless 
it is early subordinated to growth in character. 
True culture depends not on what a man knows, 
but on the result of his knowing, on the connec- 


JOY AND YOUTH 65 


tion between his knowledge and the highest and 
greatest goods of life. It is not the fact that a 
man can read and write, but the thing he reads 
and the thing he writes which counts. The 
school that teaches reading and writing must 
also look after the cultivation of the inner man, 
lest the acquisition of mere intellectual skill 
leave no room for thorough culture.’’! - The 
Church’s distrust of modern methods of popular 
education is easily understood; nor is that dis- 
trust to be allayed by sneering at ‘‘reactionary 
influences’’ and eulogizing so-called enlighten- 
ment. It would be more accurate to qualify as 
reactionary those influences which set back the 
development of our hearts and wills for the 
sake of advancing us in mere knowledge and 
power.’ 

Still sharper is the criticism of Hilty in his 
widely read book Glick. ‘‘In the matter of 
education,’’ he says, ‘“‘our day of reckoning will 
surely come. Let us but ask, ‘What does the 
school give nowadays, and what does it take 
away?’ It takes away a very large part of our 
happy youth and our physical freshness; it takes 
away our childish faith and our natural freedom. 
It gives us our first contact with wicked men and 

1 Jugendlehre, 6 f. 2 Ibid., 8. 


66 A PLEA FOR MORE JOY 


vicious conditions. It destroys, as far as it can, 
all predisposition to originality or genius. It 
teaches us a mass of stuff not only totally use- 
less for later life, but often false as well. . . . It 
gives, In return, a certain amount of necessary 
and useful knowledge, a practically useful famil- 
larity with other_individuals and groups, and— 
when all goes well—a permanent inclination to- 
wards some particular science.’’® 

Sharp criticism, this,—in some respects, per- 
haps, too sharp! The gravest charges do not ap- 
ply to our denominational schools. The writer 
apparently values too lightly, or regards as ex- 
ceptional, those good influences which in a 
properly organized school surround and control 
the child, those opportunities of forming soul and 
spirit which even to-day are open to a zealous 
and pious catechist, a teacher whose heart is in 
the right place. 

But it is certainly true that, so long as the dis- 
astrous over-valuing of knowledge and under- 
valuing of character and will, dominate the field 
of education; so long as we go packing more and 
more knowledge into the curriculum of the pub- 
lic school; so long as what Ruskin ealls ‘‘the 
madness of the modern cram and examination 

8p. 285. 


JOY AND YOUTH 67 


system’’* everywhere prevails; there will be 
great danger of the pupil’s coming to regard in- 
tellect and knowledge as supremely important, 
and heart and character as of little worth. The 
former will absorb the best energy and time and 
eare of the school. Should the so-called progres- 
sive movement which is, in fact, a most ignomin- 
lous retrogression, succeed in banishing re- 
ligion entirely from the schools, the evil conse- 
quences of the kind above referred to will be sim- 
ply frightful. All this, of course, also menaces 
the child’s joy, which is a thing of the heart and 
cannot strike deep root except in a good char- 
acter. 

Joy is likewise menaced when teachers and ed- 
ucators,—we hope the case is rare, but it does 
sometimes occur,—are under the illusion that the 
rod is the magic wand of pedagogy; when they 
are, first of all, masters in the art of flogging; 
when the teacher at school and the parent at home 
enter into whipping contests. For joy might be 
flogged entirely out of hundreds of childish 
hearts and out of whole generations of children; 
the joy of learning, the enthusiasm of youth, the 
strength of will and, in a word, every good im- 
pulse might be beaten to death, so that nothing 


4Fors Clavigera. 


68 MORE JOY 


but insolence and anger and spite and meanness 
and vulgarity would live any longer in the child. 
‘‘Hdueation’’ of this sort must be classed among 
the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance; it ranks 
with oppression of the poor, the helpless, the de- 
fenceless. Indeed, the cries raised by those 
maltreated children against their torturers will 
ascend to heaven and be heard by their Heavenly 
Father. He will one day make these joy-killers 
aware that their stewardship of authority does 
not justify the brutal use of their superior 
strength; that they ought to cherish and nourish 
the young tree and bring it to a happy develop- 
ment, and not foolishly beat it until the last blos- 
som of joy has been hacked off. 

We are not opposed to reasonable strictness, 
nor to the exercise of the right of chastisement, 
when chastisement is dictated and controlled by 
reason and affection. We are not partisans, but 
avowed antagonists, of slack training, careless 
discipline, unmanly softness; and we regard 
these things as contributing to the decrease of 
joy in the children’s world. It is a true saying: 
‘‘Life would be far happier if it were taken more 
seriously, especially in youth.’? We agree per- 
fectly with Foerster ‘‘the best preparation for 
a joyful life is to be found in that strength of 


JOY AND YOUTH 69 


character, that love of sacrifice, that habit of 
self-control, which enable us bravely to endure 
seasons of sadness or a life that is empty of 
joy and filled with misfortunes and_ priva- 
tions.’’® For life is serious, its conditions 
are hard, and the modern struggle for existence 
often becomes brutal. Therefore conscientious 
education is that which forms strong characters, 
not that which sends out into the world soft, sen- 
sitive, delicate creatures who go straightway 
down to their ruin, or else are for the first time 
hammered into hardness by painful experience.° 

We must also be grateful to Friedrich Paulsen 
that, in his latest publication,’ he has spoken 
sharply against the effeminate tendency of mod- 
ern pedagogy, and also against the foolish at- 
tempt to bring joy back into the school by making 
pleasure the sole motive of learning. He advo- 
cates a return to ‘‘the strenuous education’’ of 
earlier days and to the three great imperatives: 
Learn Obedience; Learn Hard Work; Learn 
Self-denial. 

It is precisely for joy’s sake, that we do not 
exclude, but rather insist upon, seriousness, dis- 


8 Jugendlehre, 146. 

6 Tunsione plurima, “with much hammering,” is the phrase of the 
hymn Coelestis Urbs Jerusalem. 

7 Moderne Erziehung und geschlechtliche Sittlichkeit, 83 ff. 


10 MORE JOY 


cipline, order, and effort on the part of children, 
whether at home or at school. Yet, on the other 
hand, we are certainly not of the opinion that 
bodily punishment is the only means to this end, 
or that it is indispensable. By nature, it is a 
disciplinary means which may have both good 
and bad effects—good, if rarely used, bad, if it 
becomes a regular part of the routine. Even 
when the children are exceptionally undisciplined 
and perverse, the constant use of punishment is 
still unjustifiable, if for no other reason than be- 
cause its very frequency renders it ineffectual 
and changes the dispositions of the child from 
bad to worse. 

Punishment must always be correlated with 
joy; the sunshine fructifies what wind and rain 
have cleansed and softened. Jean Paul’s phrase 
does honor to his heart: ‘‘Oh! Away with the 
tears of children; long rains do so much harm 
to the blossoms.’’ He refers to the happy nature 
of children, which makes them soon ready again 
for joy even after severe punishment. ‘‘Thank 
God!’’ he says, ‘‘the child’s memory is poorer for 
suffering than for joy. Were it otherwise, a 
long series of punishments would girdle the little 
ereature with a chain of thistles. As it is, how- 
ever, the child can be made happy over and over 


JOY AND YOUTH 71 


again, aS many as twenty times, in one unlucky 
days? 

He who has only the rod of pain and not also 
the rod of gentleness, had better not try to wield 
the first. With it alone he will never do good. 
That teacher or educator, deserves the palm and 
is worthy of all honor, who with a glance of the 
eye, a change of tone, an uplifted finger,—a 
purely psycho-physical means of warning and 
of punishing,—can hold his little flock in disci- 
pline and order, without destroying their joy and 
confidence. Here upon earth, a tear is lurking 
in the eye of every joy. But then again a smile 
of joy follows each tear, and without fail, must 
follow every tear that happens to be caused by 
the teacher. A ray of love will make such tears 
sparkle so that they will seem to be not a mis- 
fortune but one of life’s best prizes. 


Vil 
JOY AND CHRISTIANITY 


We have recorded the heavy deficit of joy on 
the balance-sheet of modern culture. Now comes 
the question, ‘‘What causes this deficit?’’ Vari- 
ous contributory causes we have already indi- 
cated; but the principal cause still remains to 
be named. As a matter of fact the chief cause 
is the irreligious, unchristian Spirit of the Age. 
This Spirit is the sworn enemy and assassin of 
joy. Itsets up the intellect as a tyrant to oppress 
the heart and soul. It tries to banish faith from 
the people’s hearts,’ although faith emancipates 
and makes them happy as nothing else can. 
Doubt saddens us and unbelief makes us 
wretched. Even Friedrich Strauss, in his let- 
ters, admits that man gets along better with 
faith than without it. This Spirit of the Age 
destroys the innocence of the soul and hence all 
true joy. It tries to disrupt the union of the 


1 The heart will he of all its wealth deprive, 
Make war on Fancy, nor let Faith survive.—Schiller. 
72 


JOY AND CHRISTIANITY: 73 


soul with God; and without God there can be no 
real joy in life. It chills the heart and withers 
it up with selfishness, emptying it of love and, 
consequently, of joy. It leads man to keep ever 
circling and circling about his own petty self 
as a centre, and this brings on giddiness, vertigo 
and finally nausea. 

This Spirit of the Age is a great liar and im- 
postor. It pretends that modern and material 
improvements will lead men to happiness and 
joy. And yet, as Carlyle forcibly puts it, all the 
ministers of finance and all the reformers of mod- 
ern HKurope together, could not make one boot- 
black happy, or at most could not make him 
happy for more than a couple of hours. The 
Spirit of the Age promises that it will open up 
new worlds of joy and, as if by magic, create 
numberless new pleasures in the life of man, by 
giving free rein to the instincts, provoking and 
spurring on lust, opening the road for the pas- 
sions, and licensing vice. The real consequence 
however is ruin of both soul and body, a disturb- 
ing and shattering of the entire nervous system, 
the loss of strength to act and to endure, weari- 
ness instead of joy in living, pessimism, fatalism, 
and suicide. The Spirit of the Age is indeed 
the chief enemy of joy. All other virus, or 


74, MORE JOY 


poison, can be easily overcome by the antidote 
of a strong healthy Christian sense but, once 
infected by the Zeitgeist, we are lost. 

Therefore, the only possible solution is the one 
which always gives the modern world nervous 
spasms and drives it into mental convulsions: 
“We must go back to Christian faith, back to 
healthy folk-life, to religious earnestness, to hu- 
mility and simplicity of heart, to plain, noble, 
pure habits of thought, to religion, to the Church, 
to Christ.’’ 

We cannot dispense with this ‘‘Go Back!’’ for 
the reason that absolutely no other power can 
hold in check the enemies who under the leader- 
ship of the Spirit of the Age, their commander- 
in-chief, are invading and devastating the world 
of joy. This same power achieves still more. 
It constructs deep coffers around every one of 
nature’s sweet sources of joy so as to exclude all 
poisonous seepage, and, on its own higher level, 
it opens up numberless supernatural springs of 
joy. 

‘‘A crucified man!—A fine God of Joy, for- 
sooth!’ ‘‘Self-crucifixion!—Truly a delightful 
path to joy!’’ Thus sneers the anti-Christian 
world. In these recent years we frequently en- 
counter the same old pagan attacks with which 


JOY AND CHRISTIANITY 73 


Herder, Goethe, and Schiller were familiar. 
Again are free spirits, like Heine, impelled *‘to 
take up arms for the old gods and their good 
ambrosial law’’ against ‘‘the wan Christ with 
his bleeding savior-hands,’’ against ‘‘the pale 
Galilean who delights in the whimpering over 
bliss destroyed,’’? against ‘‘the enemy of joy 
with his bloodless hands,’’® against ‘‘the symbol 
of the negation of life’”’ and ‘‘the blaspheming of 
life.’?* Men are still mourning the paradise of 
joy that vanished with the mythology of ancient 
Greece. ‘‘When the gods were still guiding 
the fair world in the sweet leading-strings of 
joy, how different, oh! how different, all was 
then!” 

But historical researches have destroyed this 
myth of the Hellenic paradise. Greece’s art, its 
noblest possession, supreme in harmony and 
symmetry, speaks not of joy and pleasure only, 
but also of tearful suffering and of tragic woe,— 
witness the farewell scenes upon the tombstones. 
In the last analysis Greek art was a song of sor- 
row. During the archaic age, its monuments 
were tombs or sepulchral decorations. It 1s no 
Olympian mirth that laughs at us from antiquity. 
Tn the endeavor to be happy there was produced 


2 Ibsen. 3 Anatole France. 4 Nietzsche. 


76 MORE JOY 


only a wild, noisy laughter with a boisterousness 
evidently intended to conceal deep-lying pain. 
Ancient art vanishes with a song of sorrow, in 
the tomb sculpture of the first Christian cen- 
tury.’ According to one of the men most fa- 
miliar with antiquity, ‘‘The Greeks amid the 
splendor of art and in the highest enjoyment of 
liberty, were more unhappy than is generally 
supposed.’’ ° 

The cross with its stern lines,—a cold, bare, 
branchless tree with rough-hewn stumps for 
arms,—is indeed at first sight a sad and joyless 
thing to look at, so true an image is it of harsh 
contradiction, so good a symbol of bitter pain. 
Yet men find that the cross possesses a certain 
beauty. In its sturdy clear-cut, well-propor- 
tioned form they see a picture of steadfastness, 
of aspiring effort, of opposition conquered and 
contradictories reconciled. The sight of a man 
hanging in agony upon the cross arouses, at first, 
no sense of joy, it is true. Yet there is a well- 
spring of joy in the sure faith, that the Divine 
Hero bleeding on the cross is dying in battle 
against the fiercest foe of joy and of salvation, 


5 Der Gral, 1907, 145 f. 

6 Boeckh, The Public Economy of the Athenians, Translated by 
Anthony Lamb, Boston, 1857, p. 787; Schneider, Das Andere Leben, 
10th ed., Paderborn, 1909, 62 ff. 


JOY AND CHRISTIANITY 77 


and conquering as He dies. The cross becomes 
the symbol of victory and thereby the symbol of 
joy. Darkness and gloom are dispelled and 
everywhere is shed the glory of the resurrection. 
In its light, the tree of the cross becomes the 
tree of life, of resistless power; the dried trunk 
is clothed with blossoms and fruit; and out of the 
crown of thorns spring forth roses. 

Thus also is it with the cross and the crucifix- 
ion in the life of each individual Christian. 
That a man should take up his cross daily’; that 
he should not only bear his cross, but crucify the 
flesh, the old man *—these are not forced figures 
of speech, but stern demands which certainly do 
seem likely to lead far away from joy. Yet the 
battle to which they summon is waged not against 
joy, but against joy’s worst enemies. ‘The cross 
obliges us to renounce the apples of Sodom, the 
wild cherries of sin, which are really no joys at 
all, but it does not demand a total renunciation 
of legitimate natural joys; it only insists that 
they be used in moderation and with a good in- 
tention. This much would be required not by 
Christian morality alone, but by reason and 
health as well. Excessive enjoyment always be- 


7 8t. Luke ix, 23. 
8 Galatians v, 24; Romans vi, 6. 


78 MORE JOY 


gets disgust. Unrestricted activity and gratifi- 
cation of the sensual instincts does not add to the 
sum of joy, but ruins both joy and the man; it 
sins not only against morality but against hy- 
giene, which is to-day sometimes regarded as the 
Supreme standard. <A life ‘‘beyond good and 
evil’’—to use Nietzsche’s phrase,—unscrupulous 
poaching, complete loosing of the wild, natural 
instincts, whose advocate, protector and prophet 
Nietzsche was unwillingly degraded into becom- 
ing by his less worthy disciples, the freeing of 
‘‘the beast of prey within man, the fair, raven- 
ing, blond beast, lusting for prey and conquest,’’ 
—all this does not enrich, gladden, deepen, nor 
sweeten life. It delivers life over to the most 
wretched languor, to the hospital, the madhouse, 
to suicide,—‘‘those graves of lust’’® so numer- 
ous in the world to-day. 

Such is the lesson of experience. It can al- 
most be demonstrated statistically, although the 
great, sinful, deceitful world will not believe it, 
nor admit it. Austere Christian morality, the 
commandment of self-conquest, temperance, 
mortification, moderation, fasting, do not inter- 
fere with happiness. They are really no more 
hostile to joy than the gardener is hostile to the 


2 Numbers xi, 34. 


JOY AND CHRISTIANITY 79 


rose, when in spring and autumn he cuts and 
trims the bush. 

Foerster * gives two excellent quotations from 
Tolstoi and Matthias Claudius: ‘‘Neither the 
Christian nor the heathen,’’ says Tolstoi, ‘‘can 
_ start the work of perfection anywhere except at 
the beginning, namely, in the practice of temper- 
ance. .. . Temperance is the first stage of a good 
life and it can be reached only step by step. 
Temperance is emancipation from one’s lusts. 
But man has many. lusts, and to wage effectual 
war, he must begin with the fundamentals, glut- 
tony, sloth, sensuality.’’ And Matthias Claud- 
ius observes: ‘*Many men condemn fasting, but 
it should not be wholly condemned. We too 
readily condemn what we are unwilling to do our- 
selves. Abuse, of course, may creep in any- 
where. They tell us that to be always moderate 
is better than to fast at times; and this may be 
quite true; but since the majority of men are not 
always moderate, it is a good thing, now and then, 
to show who is master in the house.”’ 

Even Goethe realized that nothing but the 
Spirit of austerity and sacrifice can provide the 
proper basis for a healthy, happy, cheerful life. 
He declared this in the well-known verses: 

10 Lebensfiihring, 45 f. 


80 MORE JOY 


If thou hast not part 
In death as well as birth, 
A sorry guest thou art 
Upon the gloomy earth." 


Yes! man must die in order to grow. He must 
renounce selfishness, for it makes him poorer, 
not richer, and especially poorer in joy. ‘‘Noth- 
ing shuts in a life and shuts out satisfaction and 
joy like the self-considering temper and the self- 
centered aim. Such a life, though it may seem 
to itself self-developing, is in fact self-deceived. 
Instead of growing richer in its resources, it finds 
itself growing poorer. The more it cultivates 
itself, the more sterile it grows; the more it ac- 
cumulates, the less it has; the more it saves, the 
more it 1s lost.’’ * 

It is unreasonable and even absurd to demand 
unrestricted freedom as a condition of joy. Rus- 
kin is clear and true on this point: ‘‘For wise 
laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not 
chains, but chain mail—strength and defence, 
though something also of an incumbrance. And 
this necessity of restraint, remember, is just as 
honorable to man as the necessity of labor. You 


11 The authenticity of these lines has recently been questioned 
(Goethe-Jahrbuch, ix, 329). 


12 Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Ohristian Character, p. 206, 


JOY AND CHRISTIANITY 81 


hear every day greater numbers of foolish people 
speaking about liberty, as if it were such an hon- 
orable thing: so far from being that, it is, on the 
whole, and in the broadest sense, dishonorable, 
and an attribute of the lower creatures. No hu- 
man being, however great, or powerful, was ever 
so free asafish. There is always something that 
he must, or must not do; while the fish may do 
whatever he likes. . . . ‘You will find, on fairly 
thinking of it, that it is his Restraint which is 
honorable to man, not his Liberty; ... And 
throughout the world, of the two abstract things, 
liberty and restraint, restraint is always the more 
honorable. It is true, indeed, that in these and 
all other matters you never can reason finally 
from the abstraction, for both liberty and re- 
straint are good when they are nobly chosen, and 
both are bad when they are basely chosen; but 
of the two, I repeat, it is restraint which charac- 
terizes the higher creature, and betters the lower 
creature: and, from the ministering of the arch- 
angel to the labor of the insect,—from the pois- 
ing of the planets to the gravitation of a grain of 
dust,—the power and glory of all creatures, and 
all matter, consist in their obedience, not in their 
freedom. The Sun has no liberty—a dead leaf 
has much. The dust of which you are formed 


89 MORE JOY 


has no liberty. Its liberty will come—with its 
corruption.’’** ... ‘‘T have hardly patience to 
hold my pen and go on writing, as I remember (I 
would that it were possible for a few consecutive 
instants to forget) the infinite follies of modern 
thought in this matter, centered in the notion 
that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of 
the use he is likely to make of it. Folly unfath- 
omable! unspeakable! unendurable to look in the 
full face of, as the laugh of a cretin. ‘You will 
send your child, will you, into a room where a 
table is loaded with sweet wine and fruit—some 
poisoned, some not?—you will say to him, 
‘Choose freely, my little child! It is so good 
for you to have freedom of choice: it forms your 
character—your individuality! If you take the 
wrong cup, or the wrong berry, you will die be- 
fore the day is over, but you will have acquired 
the dignity of a Free child!’ ’’* 

When will men grow wise enough to perceive 
that duty, command, obedience, are not enemies 
and hindrances but guardians and protectors of 
true freedom and bringers of true joy? 

In modern times Christianity is denounced as 
a destroyer of joy, mainly because it rigorously 


18 The Two Paths, Lect. V, iii. 
14 Queen of the Air, iii, 151. 


JOY AND CHRISTIANITY 83 


and strictly fences in and holds down the sexual 
life and thus precludes many ‘‘possibilities of 
happiness’’ and seals up many sources of enjoy- 
ment. There are pupils of Nietzsche who, going 
beyond their master, demand absolute freedom 
for sexual love and even want to have it liberated 
from the yoke of monogamy and every moral 
law. 

Max Zerbst has recently constructed ‘‘a phi- 
losophy of joy,’’ built upon the senseless claim 
that joy and pleasure should be independent of 
all moral laws and all institutions,—because in- 
stitutions, such as the State, the Church, the 
school, and the moral law, are the great dis- 
turbers of man’s inner balance. This ‘‘philoso- 
phy”’ is dedicated to Aristippus of Cyrene and 
concludes with a hymn to Pleasure. It asserts 
that pain is always evil; that pleasure is the one 
precious thing in life, the sole source of vital en- 
ergy, man’s chief liberator and redeemer, and 
his highest good. But instead of showing how 
pleasure can be heightened and deepened so as 
to eliminate all pain and to permeate and bless 
the whole of life, Zerbst finds himself shudder- 
ing with nameless horror at the first forebodings 
of the new ‘‘era of pleasure’’ whose coming he 
has heralded in Bacchie style. 


84. MORE JOY. 


H. W. Foerster * has given a manly and down- 
right answer to the wretched and unbalanced 
worshippers of pleasure, the male and female ad- 
vocates of free-love who support the absolute dic- 
tatorship of Eros. His answer applies equally 
well to those more serious people who image that 
in these matters of sex, strict order and discipline 
may have been necessary in former times but that 
modern man must have the courage to act freely 
and independently. To give free rein to sexual- 
ity and eroticism does not really produce joy, but 
merely sacrifices the spiritual self to the sensual. 
In this matter, ‘‘the grand old commandments 
and the mighty old ideals’’ of Christianity, the 
religious sense and the power of grace, are quite 
indispensable, and all the more indispensable, 
because modern men are not stronger but weaker 
in character and will-power. It is only by means 
of the helps just mentioned that the sexual im- 
pulse can be checked and controlled so as to be 
a blessing instead of a fearful curse. If Chris- 
tianity is reproached with having stifled natural 
instincts and lessened human joy, the answer 
may well be ‘*Christianity does not stifle the nat- 
ural instincts, but regulates, purifies and en- 


15 Marriage and the Sea-Problem, Translated by Meyrick Booth, 
New York, Frederick A. Stokes Company. 


JOY AND CHRISTIANITY 85 


nobles them. You, yourselves, on the other hand, 
strangle the will, the higher spiritual self, by 
smothering it with flesh.’’ 

Teachers who seriously think of regulating the 
reproductive instinct without the aid of the Com- 
mandments or other religious helps, says Foer- 
ster, are, like engineers who would dam up a 
mighty river by playing upon flutes. Some day, 
when it is too late, they will see the flood of filth 
go pouring over the dikes. With good reason 
Foerster warns against the fashionable mania 
for enlightenment, which does not exorcise the 
danger it professes to fear but invokes it. In- 
calculable evils result from prematurely, impru- 
dently, or needlessly directing the attention to 
sexual matters. That is going to the same ex- 
treme as if we attempted to instruct a family 
in the danger of contagion by introducing germs 
into the home. It is not so much enlightenment 
of the intellect that is needed, as strengthening 
and training of the character and will, in order 
that there may be at hand a power, a master, to 
watch over the developing sex-instinct, to set it 
in its place, and if necessary, to bind it with 
chains.** All this is demanded in the interest of 
joy itself. For the pleasures of erotic passion 


16 Pestalozzi. 


86 MORE JOY 


are real destroyers of joy. Love is indeed a 
source of joy; but a source which must be walled 
in and protected from infection. It must be led 
from nature’s lower levels to the heights of 
the soul. 


IX 
THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN 


‘The world,’’ writes Father A. M. Weiss, 
O. P., ‘‘has always felt sure that the Christian 
life is “alan and disagreeable. The first Chris- 
tians encountered this reproach from those who 
knew their deeds and characteristics only by 
hearsay. That the notion is false we need 
scarcely say. Any man, personally acquainted 
with those who are Christians by conviction, can 
bear witness that he has never met so sincere a 
welcome, such unaffected courtesy, such innocent 
cheerfulness as in familiar intercourse with truly 
Christian spirits. Even our avowed enemies 
concede this fact which, indeed, is so evident that 
the stiff, affected piety characteristic of a spu- 
rious religion, never stops complaining about it. 

. If these censors had become acquainted with 
Christianity in its true form, that is to say, when 
earnestly lived up to, they would better under- 
stand the source of that happiness, that childlike 


1 Minuc. Felix, Octav., 12. 
87 


88 MORE JOY 


delight in nature, in a word, that frank, cheerful 
spirit, which is the characteristic of every class 
and every period ruled by faith. ... Every- 
where and always it has been observed that true 
exactitude and earnestness in the service of God, 
are rewarded with serenity of soul and happi- 
ness. Chrysostom remarked it among the natu- 
rally gloomy Phceenicians and Syrians; the 
Jesuits observed it among the ferocious Indians 
of Paraguay. To-day, according to a keen ob- 
server, A. von Hiibner, travelers of every creed 
note that when the Chinese are converted to 
Christianity, the very expression of the features 
alters; and although the average Chinaman dis- 
plays most offensively his unbelief, irony, or sul- 
len indifference, yet the visitor to any Catholic 
Church in China will be joyfully surprised at 
the unwonted look of trust, reverence, and holi- 
ness on the faces there.’’ ? 

For those who believe in the Christian faith, 
and live up to their belief, the bounds of enjoy- 
ment are set by duty, by obedience to the Com- 
mandments, by the rules of physical and spiritual 
health, by love of God and one’s neighbor. 
Within these bounds all legitimate sources of joy 
flow in fuller and purer streams than in the 

2 Apologie des Christentums, ii, 3rd ed., 824 ff. 


THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN 89 


world. Within these bounds prevails St. Paul’s 
law of liberty, ‘‘ All things are yours,’’* instead 
of the narrow Jewish law, ‘*Touch not, taste not, 
handle not.’’* Moreover the Christian has first 
claim on the rich harvest of joy gathered from 
the fields of the earth, even in this present life, 
—namely, the joys offered by nature, by the 
home, by society, by art, not excepting food and 
drink. The Christian has the first claim to these 
things, because ‘‘for the faithful above all God 
hath created them,’’°® and the Christian knows 
how to partake of them with thanksgiving to the 
glory of God,® and to sanctify them by the word 
of God and prayer.’ He is skilled in the art of 
adding to every cup of joy a drop of eternity, of 
grace, of heavenly bliss, and makes joy a true 
elixir of life, so that both body and soul may 


share the enjoyment, and thus heighten the value / 


and promote the purpose of life. 

Even with regard to purely natural pleasures, 
it holds good that ‘‘godliness is profitable to all 
things, having promise not only of the life that 
now is, and of that which is to come.’’* ‘‘Keep 
a good conscience and thou shalt always have 

8] Corinthians, iii, 22. 6 I Corinthians x, 30-31. 


4 Colossians ii, 21. 7I Timothy iv, 5. 
5I Timothy iv, 3. 8 Ibid., iv, 8. 


w ~ 


> 


y 


90 MORE JOY 


joy’’ is the simple yet sound advice of The Fol- 
lowing of Christ;°® and that advice is confirmed 
by experience, ‘‘If there be joy in the world, cer- 
tainly the man whose heart is pure enjoys it.’’ ” 
Moreover, there are open to the Christian 
whole kingdoms of joy which are inaccessible 
to the worldling and the sinner. Faith, the state 
of grace, prayer, lift us up into the sunshine and 
into the presence of God; they weave a blue sky 
that stretches over the whole extent of life; they 
establish and maintain a uniform cheerfulness 
which suffering and trouble cannot disturb. 
Who can number, or analyze, or describe, the 
joys of prayer? St. Bernard says, “‘God, be- 
ing tranquil, tranquilizes all and to see Him rest- 
ing is to be at rest.’’*4_ This rest, produced by 
prayer, is the prerequisite and foundation of the 
soul’s joy. In this peaceful realm there blooms 
a flora of joy, so abundant, so richly and variously 
colored, that it cannot be described or classified. 
Indeed, there is a deeper significance than is 
commonly supposed in the counsel of St. James: 
“Is any of you sad? Let him pray.’’ St, 
Chrysostom calls prayer ‘‘a refuge in every 
sorrow, a principle of constant pleasure, the 


9IT, 6. 1. 11 In Cantic., Serm. 23, n. 16. 
10 Tbid., II, 4. 2. 12 §t. James v, 13. 


THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN 91 


mother of philosophy.’’** St. Nilus calls it a 
‘‘charm against sadness and depression of 
soul.’”’** And Lagarde says that piety is the 
sound health of the soul. 

What a good spirit prevails in the house where 
family prayer is the custom. At least once each 
morning and evening, this brings together the 
members scattered here and there, during the rest 
of the day; it maintains the sentiment of unity; 
it creates the breathing spots and intervals of 
repose so badly needed in these strenuous times. 
Pray and time stands still.” Family prayer lifts 
the household up into a higher world. ‘‘It isa 
key by day and a lock by night.’’ It resolves dis- 
cords with the utmost simplicity, relieves strain, 
purifies the atmosphere of the home, sanctifies 
domestic joy and invests the father of the family 
with priestly dignity. The family prayer and 
hymn make the sweetest music ever heard upon 
earth and they unite each particular household 
to the whole blessed family of God. 

True, the Christian law of life is stern and 
austere, but, as in the Ark of the Covenant, jars 
of sweet manna stand next to the Tables of the 

18 Contra Anom., 7, 7. 


14 De Orat., c. 16. 
15 A, Freybe, Das deutsche Haus und seine Sitte, i (1910), 125. 


92 MORE JOY 


Law. Throughout the ecclesiastical year the life 
of the Christian is filled to overflowing with joys 
of the noblest kind. The sacraments are inti- 
mately related to joy. They restore it when 
lost; they nourish and increase it when present; 
they ennoble and sanctify it, if it is merely nat- 
ural. Confession is a relief for life’s grief and 
weariness, a safety-valve for the terrible pres- 
sure of the sense of guilt. The Sacrament of the 
Altar opens up an infinite realm of mystical joys. 
The House of God and the worship of God are 
rich in sublime poetry, in heart-stirring joy. 
Here the Christian people find their heavenly 
home, their spiritual drama and concert and art- 
exhibition. 

‘To what delight,’’ writes Grupp, ‘‘is the pious 
soul introduced by a worthy communion! Piere- 
ing through all earthly veils, she perceives the 
great mystery and sees the heavens opened. One 
who has experienced such joy can never again 
be utterly unhappy or unbelieving. The Greeks 
were wont to say that no one who had looked upon 
the statue of Olympian Jove could ever again 
be entirely miserable. How much more truly 
may this be said of the Christian who has ex- 
perienced the presence of God in prayer.’’ #* 


16 Jensettsreligion (1910), 166. 


THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN 93 


Of old, privileges which came from no over- 
lord but were due simply to God and the sun, were 
called ‘*Sun-Rights.’’ 7 In the same sense, Sun- 
day may be called the people’s ‘‘Sun-Right.”’ 
What rights and what joys are lacking in the in- 
_ dividual life when Sunday counts as nothing, 
when servile work burdens the Lord’s Day or 
debauchery dishonors it! The day is made.a day 
of real joy through .a wonderful combination of 
the natural and supernatural pleasures con- 
tributed by godly rest, the loosening of labor’s 
yoke, the united worship of God, the sermon at 
High Mass, the outing in the fields and woods, 
and the hours of quiet enjoyment at the family 
hearth. In the ‘‘Hymelstras,’’ ** Brother Ste- 
phen gives a charming description of the father 
of a family taking ‘‘his little folk’”’ to the sermon 
and afterwards asking them what they have 
heard, supplementing their observations with his 
own. ‘Then he gets his little drink and sings 
his good little song, ‘‘and thus he and his little 
flock were happy in the Lord.”’ 

In his Book of Childhood, Bogumil Goltz 
has described the fascination of Sunday for the 
child-mind: ‘‘Ah! on this day nothing was the 
same as on school-days and work-days. We felt 

17 A. Freybe, op. cit., 132. 18 Augsburg, 1484, 


94 MORE JOY 


the difference in the air we breathed and the soil 
we trod; we drank it in with the very water. The 
sunbeams flashed it into the soul; the sparrows 
twittered it among the notes of the church organ; 
the trees told it to one another with rustling 
leaves. Before sunrise, in the gray dawn, the 
coming hours of happiness were borne on the 
wings of the morning wind to this chosen day. 
O Lord, My God, then in very truth it was Sun- 
day,—Sunday through the whole day, Sunday in 
every hour and minute, in every twinkling of an 
eye, in every flash of a sunbeam, in every throb 
of the pulse, in every drop of blood, in all the 
body and all the soul. One could hear and see 
nothing, feel nothing, be aware of nothing, will 
nothing, think nothing, but just that it was Sun- 
day, the sacred day. All that one looked at or 
experienced, was different from on other days,— 
the same and yet not the same, for it was illu- 
mined, hallowed, and invested with the mysteri- 
ous radiance of Sunday.”’ 

Every festive season has its own peculiar joys. 
Not even during solemn Advent, nor in the peni- 
tential season of Lent, is joy lacking. How full 
of joy is the message renewed each year by the 
Christmas angels and again by the Easter Alle- 
Inia. To pray means to relieve one’s heart, to bid 


THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN 95 


care begone, to breathe out misery and distress, 
to breathe in the pure mountain air and the en- 
ergy of another world. Intercourse with the 
saints enlivens the heart, just like conversation 
with the noblest men. A childlike relationship 
with the Mother of God imparts and preserves 
in every period of life that childlike happiness 
which only a mother’s presence and a mother’s 
love bestow; so with good reason Mary is called 
Causa nostrae laetitiae, ‘Cause of Our Joy.” 
Each one of the Christian virtues has its own 
content of joy; each is a little garden harboring 
flowers of every form and color and fragrance. 
The flowers of hope, in particular, have this 
Special quality that they survive the roughest 
weather and become all the stronger and more 
fragrant amid the most violent storms. 

In truth, there is no soil so rich as religion in 
springs of health, none so well supplied with 
fresh, sweet water. In whatever spot we dig 
down, bright clear streams come gushing forth. 
One realizes the meaning of the prophet’s words: 
‘They shall fear and be troubled for all the good 
things and for all the peace that I will make for 
them.’’*® Many perhaps will be too highly 
‘‘eultured”’ to perceive and enjoy these quiet de- 

19 Jeremias xxxiii, 9. 


96 MORE JOY 


lights; but the good, plain people will enjoy 
them all the more for their simplicity; the poor 
Christian working-man and working-woman 
will absorb them all the more gratefully. True, 
as well as beautiful, are the words of that noble 
convert Elizabeth Gnauck-Kiihne: ‘‘Who un- 
derstands the working-woman? Who bothers 
about her welfare? Let us answer briefly, — 
The Catholic Church, first and before all others. 
. .. When she summons to High Mass, she be- 
decks herself like a loving mother in order to be 
beautiful to her children. She is very fair and 
despises no earthly adornment. If the work- 
ing-woman holds this mother’s hand fast in her 
own, then, at least once every seven days she will 
have the delightful experience of spending one 
happy hour, and for the time being her wheel of 
Ixion will stop whirling. Her senses, dulled by 
dust and noise and filth, will be aroused, and her 
soul will rest again in God. The world has shut 
out the working-woman from all that is fair in 
nature and art. The Catholic Church vested 
splendidly for her sake, soothes her life—her 
poor, bare, prosaic life,—with a breath of beauty 
and lofty poetry. And although this poetry 
and this beauty are perhaps not analyzed, they 
are deeply appreciated.’’ 


THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN 97 


Worldly folk cannot understand such joy. 
When they hear it spoken of, they answer with 
that notorious silly laugh of theirs, and look like 
blind men who hear someone speaking of colors. 
Yet religious joys are really precious; and more- 
over, they may be acquired by any soul of faith 
and good-will. They are strong and mighty 
realities. They give the sole explanation of the 
fact that the number of happy, contented, joyous 
persons is a hundredfold greater among faithful 
Christians, than among the most highly privi- 
leged classes of worldlings, who regard amuse- 
ment as the only occupation and the chief con- 
cern of life. We know how much gilded misery 
exists among these people; we have heard certain 
startling admissions and confessions made by 
them. On many tombs might fittingly be placed 
the epitaph Dingelstedt composed for himself: 


He had in life much happiness, 
Yet happy he has never been. 


Worldly men possess and secure many joys; 
still they are without joy. The fact is these joys 
have no real value; they are froth and show that 
quickly surfeit, but never satisfy, a man. 
Worldly joys are like all other worldly goods. 
‘* Possessed, they are a burden; loved, they are a 


98 MORE JOY 


defilement; lost, they are a torment.’’* St. 
Ignatius of Loyola said: ‘‘AIl the honey that 
can be gathered from the blossoms of the world 
does not contain as much sweetness as the gall 
and vinegar of our Savior.’’ 

The world, itself,—so sceptical about joys 
which it cannot see, nor touch, nor eat, nor drink, 
—yet comes under their benign influence. Per- 
sons who possess these joys in filness become 
makers of joy and bringers of joy to everyone 
around them, and are thus real benefactors of all 
mankind. How joyless life would be were it not 
for these sunny souls, who are so happy them- 
selves and radiate happiness to others. We meet 
them everywhere, sometimes even in beggars’ 
rags, or in childish forms, more often in peasant 
dress and in priestly or religious garb than in 
silk and satin garments, more often in the 
homely hut than in the splendid salon, more often 
in the country than in the city. Upon closer 
acquaintance we see that the constant serenity of 
their lives and the overflowing joy which they im- 
part to others, must be the reflection of their own 
simple, homely, hearty faith and piety and sin- 
cerity. There is something angelic about them; 


20 Bona, quae possessa onerant, amata inquinant, amissa cruciant. 
St. Bernard, Ep. 103. 


THE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN 99 


they radiate light and beneficent warmth. 
Neither the coarsest mind nor the gloomiest heart 
can resist their influence. 

When they approach and offer aid, the suffer- 
ers smile, the savage grow tame, curses and blas- 
phemies are silenced, unhappiness is banished 
and its ravages are checked by a mightier power. 
They have the magic gift of lifting the weight 
from the hearts of their fellowmen by a soft 
word and a bright look, of finding a balm for 
every wound, and, above all, of compounding out 
of their own souls’ suffering and distress, the 
medicines and draughts of joy that others need. 
As Hilty says, ‘‘Truly spontaneous goodness 
of heart is not the fruit of philosophy and cul- 
ture. To produce it is the undeniable and ex- 
clusive privilege of Christianity, and this is the 
living proof, throughout the centuries, of Chris- 
tianity’s divine origin. Even to-day, the attempt 
to find a substitute for the Christian religion 
must fail, because nothing else can possibly give 
birth to a like cheerfulness and kindness.”’ 7? 

Bless them! those sunny souls, with their 
kindly eyes and their hearts of gold, true bene- 
factors of humanity. Would that they were a 
thousand times more numerous, then the problem 

21 Glick, 251 £. 


100 MORE JOY 

of joy would be finally solved. But meanwhile, 
how can their number be increased? Why, of 
course, by your joining them. And how is that 
to be done? We can only answer: ‘‘Seek ye 
therefore first the kingdom of God, and his jus- 
tice, and all these things (including joy) shall be 
added unto you.’’®? Be more faithful in the 
performance of your duty, especially your reli- 
gious duty, and joy will come spontaneously. If 
we wish to have flowers, we must plant and water 
them. This does not imply that we cannot make 
a direct effort to learn and to exercise Joyousness 
and friendliness. In fact, to study with especial 
care this fair aspect of Christianity and to prac- 
tice cheerfulness, is a proceeding which, at the 
present time, seems to be particularly expedient 
and meritorious. 


22 §t. Matthew vi, 33. 


xX 
JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 


There would certainly be no lack of material 
for a whole theology of joy; and the fundamental 
chapter, most interesting of all, would be the bib- 
ical. Any concordance will make plain the im- 
portance attached to joy in Holy Scripture. The 
Synonyms of joy are among those chief words of 
the Bible which recur hundreds and hundreds of 
times,—a significant fact in a book using no idle 
or unnecessary words. Holy Scripture thus be- 
comes a sort of ‘‘paradise of pleasure,’’! where 
we may find the joy that we have vainly sought, 
or perhaps have lost, in the world. 


JOY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 


Like a rich vein of silver, joy runs through the 
writings of the Old Testament and through the 
life that it describes. The Hebrew language,— 
although its vocabulary is poor in comparison 
with the classical and modern tongues,—has no 

1 Genesis, iii, 23. 

101 


102 MORE JOY 


less than twelve verbs which mean ‘‘to rejoice,”’ 
‘‘to be happy.’’* The good Israelite is saved 
from the danger of undervaluing or distorting 
the idea of joy and the human desire for it, by 
his knowledge that the deepest, purest fountain 
of joy is the throne of God, the Divine Essence. 
As God Himself rejoices ‘‘in His works,’’? ‘‘in 
Jerusalem,’’* and over Sion ‘‘with gladness,’’> 
so does the just man ‘‘rejoice in the Lord,’’ * and 
‘‘delight in the Lord’’* and ‘‘rejoice before 
God.’’® 

True, the Old Testament is the covenant of fear 
and the people are kept fearful by God’s judg- 
ments and by the thunderings of the prophets. 
Yet this fear does not exclude joy; for the Old 
Testament is also the covenant of hope which 
reconciles fear and joy,—so that the Psalmist 
can say: ‘‘Rejoice with trembling,’’® and: 
‘‘Let my heart rejoice that it may fear thy 
name.’’*® Tear and joy live together like sisters 
and play with each other like two little lambs. 
Joy in God is the privilege and sweetest reward 


2 Die Freude in den Schriften des Alten Bundes, von A. Wiinsche, 
Weimar, 1896. 5. 


3 Psalms ciii, 31. 7 Psalms xxxvi, 4. 
4Isaias Ixv, 19. 8 Psalms, \xvii, 4. 
5 Sophonias iii, 17. 9 Psalms ii, 11. 


6 Psalms xiii, 11. 10 Psalme Ixxxv, 11. 


JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 103 


of the fear of God: ‘‘Oh, how great is the multi- 
tude of thy sweetness, O Lord, which thou hast 
hidden for them that fear thee.’’*t Unworthy 
members of the covenant, who do not fear God, 
but desert Him to serve idols, are expressly de- 
barred from joy: ‘‘Thus saith the Lord God: 
Behold, my servants shall eat, and you shall be 
hungry: behold, my servants shall drink, and you 
shall be thirsty. Behold, my servants shall re- 
joice, and you shall be confounded; behold, my 
servants shall praise for joyfulness of heart, and 
you shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl 
for grief of spirit.’’” 

Even in grievous trouble and affliction the God- 
fearing children of Israel look confidently for 
the guidance and providence of God, sure that 
the joy of deliverance shall encompass them soon 
again; and that ‘‘the meek shall increase their 
joy in the Lord, and the poor men shall rejoice 
in the Holy One of Israel.’’** Providence ar- 
ranges a kindly balancing of sad and happy pe- 
riods, of suffering and consolation: ‘We have 
rejoiced for the days in which thou hast humbled 
us; for the years in which we have seen evils;’’ ** 
‘‘ According to the multitude of my sorrows in my 


11 Psalms xxx, 20. 18 [saias xxix, 19. 
12 Jsatas lxv, 13 ff. 14 Psalms Ixxxix, 15. » 


104 MORE JOY 


heart, thy comforts have given joy to my 
soul. 7/7? 

So also the consciousness of belonging to the 
chosen people was for the Israelites an ever-flow- 
ing joy. ‘‘Neither is there any other nation so 
great, that hath gods so nigh them, as our God is 
present to all our petitions. For what other na- 
tion is there so renowned that hath ceremonies, 
and just judgments, and all the law?’’** The 
Law was indeed a strict disciplinarian, but also 
a good and wise ‘‘pedagogue’”’ *’ leading to Christ, 
not merely by punishments but also by joys. In 
it the people were given a source of wisdom ex- 
alting them high above all other nations, which 
He alone could open that knoweth all things,— 
‘*He that prepared the earth for evermore. ... 
He that sendeth forth light and it goeth; and hath 
called it, and it obeyeth him with trembling. 
And the stars have given light in their watches, 
and rejoiced: ‘They were called and they said: 
Here we are; and with cheerfulness they have 
shined forth to him that made them.’’* To this 
wise and holy Law, the Old Testament dedicates 
the 118th Psalm, that majestic hymn whose dom- 
inant tone is joy. The good Israelite looks on 


15 Psalms xciii, 19. 17 Galatians iii, 24. 
16 Deuteronomy, iv, 7 f. 18 Baruch iii, 32 ff. 


JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 105 


these commandments as the joy of his heart,” 
he meditates on them because he has loved them,” 
and delights in them ‘‘as in all riches,’’ 7* ‘‘as one 
that hath found great spoil.’’ °° 

The Temple was the pride, the boast, the joy, 
of the whole people and of each individual Is- 
raelite. How exuberantly this joy breaks out 
in the well-known ‘‘ Psalms of the Temple!’’ We 
must meditate upon them thoroughly, if we would 
appreciate what a joyful place the Temple was 
for the pious Israelite and how truly God there 
fulfilled His promise made through the prophet; 
‘“‘T will bring them into my holy mount, and will 
make them joyful in my house of prayer.’’* 
The singing of the words, ‘‘We shall go into the 
house of the Lord,’’** was a message of joy al- 
ways, but particularly so on great festivals. A 
special law ordained that there should then be 
rejoicing and feasting.> The Feast of the Tab- 
ernacles was celebrated for seven days.*® The 
climax of this feast was the ceremony of drawing 
the water. At the morning and evening sacrifice 
the priest lifted some water out of the Pool of 
Siloe in a golden pitcher, carried it through the 


19y, 111. 28 Isaiag lvi, 7. 
20y,. 47. 24 Psalms exxi, 1. 
21iv. 14. 25 Deuteronomy xii, 7; xiv, 26. 


22 vy. 162, 26 Deuteronomy xvi, 13. 


106 MORE JOY 


Water Gate and poured it, mixed with wine, into 
a basin at the altar, amid such general rejoicing 
that the saying arose, ‘‘ He that hath not seen the 
joy on the feast of the Drawing of Water hath 
never seen any joy.’’ To this Our Savior re- 
ferred, when He cried out: ‘‘If any man thirst, 
let him come to me and drink!’’?*_ He thus re- 
vealed Himself as the only one who can give the 
living water of true joy. 

The highest note of joy in the Old Testament 
is struck by the prophets when they look away 
from the guilt and misery of the present towards 
the Messianic future and, with eyes enlightened 
by the spirit of God, perceive the Redeemer and 
the work of His grace. They cannot find images 
and words exultant enough to express their de- 
light and happiness. And certainly for every 
faithful Israelite, the Messianic hope was the 
Sweetest gift of joy in his life and a foretaste of 
the joy of the New Testament. The purest and 
most soulful echo of this joy in the Old Testa- 
ment is, at the same time, its first echo in the 
New: The Magnificat. 

Let it be noted too, how the Old Testament 
gives expression to an exultant love of nature in- 
comparably superior to that of the classical peo- 

27 St, John vii, 37. 


JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 107 


ples in depth and purity, as well as in spiritual 
and poetic value. Radiant with the sunshine of 
faith and the moonlight of Messianic hope, re- 
vealing and reflecting the beauty and goodness 
of the Creator, permeated with His breath, shar- 
ing man’s expectation of the Messiah, nature 
was infinitely closer to the Israelite than to the 
pagan. To the former she had much more to 
say. She shared his sorrow and his joy; and she 
let him share in the joys which God bestowed 
upon her, the luminous traces of His creative 
Hand and His omnipresence. How close the 
musical song-loving people of Israel kept to na- 
ture, and what a kindly, cheering, sympathetic 
mother and friend and dispenser of joy she was 
to them, may best be seen in the constant personi- 
fications of nature woven through the Psalms and 
the Prophetic Books. 

Even ‘‘Thabor and Hermon shall rejoice’’ in 
the name of the Lord; ** ‘‘the fir-trees also have 
rejoiced ...and the cedars of Libanus;’’* 
‘the hills shall be girded about with joy .. . and 
the vales shall shout, yea, they shall sing.’ * 
The heavens rejoice, the earth is glad, the sea 1s 
moved, the fields are joyful, the trees of the woods 


28 Psalms Ixxxviii, 13. 30 Psalms I\xiv, 13 f. 
29 Isaias xiv, 8. 


108 MORE JOY 


rejoice before the face of the Lord;?! the sun, 
‘fas a bridegroom coming out of his bride-cham- 
ber, hath rejoiced as a giant to run the way.’’ *? 
According to the prophet, ‘‘the land that was 
desolate and impassable shall be glad, and the 
wilderness shall rejoice, and shall flourish like 
the lily. It shall-bud forth and blossom, and 
Shall rejoice with joy and praise; the glory of 
Libanus is given to it; the beauty of Carmel, and 
Saron, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and 
the beauty of our God.’’?*? Thus nature too, 
breathes the sunny warmth of joy in God and ra- 
diates this joy forth again into the souls of the 
faithful. 

All in all, the people of God under the Old 
Testament ought to have been joyful people. 
And so they were, as long as apostasy and infi- 
delity did not invalidate their claim. ‘Sing joy- 
fully to God, all the earth: serve ye the Lord with 
gladness. Come in before his presence with ex- 
ceeding great joy,’’ °* was a recommendation then 
in force. The exhortation: ‘‘Be glad in the 
Lord, and rejoice, ye just, and glory, all ye right 
of heart’’*’ is ever repeated. ‘And let the just 

31 Psalms xev, 11f., 84 Psalms exix, 2. 


82 Psalms xviii, 6. 35 Psalms xxxi, 11. 
33 Isaias xxxv, 1 f. 


JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 109 


feast, and rejoice before God; and be delighted 
with gladness.’’** In a time of great sadness 
Nehemias exhorted the people: ‘‘Be not sad; 
for the joy of the Lord is our strength.”’** Of 
Tsrael, the Psalmist says: ‘‘ Happy is that peo- 
ple whose God is the Lord’’** and again: 
‘‘Blessed is the people that knoweth jubilation. 
They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy 
countenance; and in thy name they shall rejoice 
all the day, and in thy justice they shall be ex- 
alted.’’ °° 


THE NEW TESTAMENT AND JOY. 


The New Testament is, of course, the Testa- 
ment of joy in a far higher degree than the Old. 
The New Testament is welcomed to earth by the 
Virgin Mother, in her little home, with her heart’s 
Magnificat, the most beautiful of Messianic 
canticles, more holy and joyful than anything 
since the days of Paradise. It is publicly an- 
nounced by the angels on Christmas night as a 
‘Coreat joy that shall be to all the people.’’ ® 

The bearer and the centre of New Testament 
joy is the Messiah, the God-Man. Jesus and joy 

—that, indeed, is a mystery of which it is hard to 


86 Psalms Ixvii, 4. 39 Psalms Ixxxviii, 16 f. 
37 IJ Esdras viii, 10. 40 St. Luke ii, 10. 
38 Psalms exliii, 15. 


110 MORE JOY 


speak. Who will fathom or measure the nature 
and the depth of the God-Man’s joy? It is a 
wonderful union of divine happiness,—insepa- 
rable from His Person, never lost even in His 
darkest hours,—with all the joy possible to a 
pure, sinless, human heart. For He has become 
hike unto us in all things, even in joy, and has 
needed it and made use of it, just as food and 
drink. 

Even childish joy was not unknown to Him. 
It radiated from His eyes to His mother and His 
foster-father, to the shepherds and the three wise 
men. It smiled up from His face at Simeon and 
Anna, making their hearts rejoice. The eyes 
and features of the Blessed Child of Nazareth 
were illumined with a reflection both of divine 
bliss and of a child’s holy happiness. True, the 
shadow of Calvary and the Cross already lay over 
his young life and upon the souls of Mary and 
Joseph; and the foreknowledge, the anticipated 
pain, of the passion was like a fiery garment 
which the Redeemer wore from childhood. Yet 
despite sadness, poverty, and want, despite dark 
foreknowledge and tragic forebodings, the life 
of the Holy Family was not wanting in those 
joys which send their fragrance forth from the 
homes of the poor to the good hearts round about. 


JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 111 


One of the apocryphal gospels relates that the 
people of Nazareth gave the Child Jesus the name 
of ‘‘Gentleness.’’ They had a saying, ‘“‘Let us 
go to Gentleness, to become happy!’’ This is 
perfectly credible; for in the sunshine of His 
nature everything must have been illumined with 


joy. 


To Him even the thought of the passion was ~ 
not mere pain, but also joy, something which He | 


seized and embraced with joyful eagerness, with 


nae 


all the enthusiasm of a youth’s noble soul. What | 


a garden of joy nature must have been to Him! 
Never has the eye of any other youth looked upon 
the life and growth of nature with so clear an 
understanding, such deep-piercing keenness of 
vision, so ardent alove. On Nazareth’s hills and 
fields was woven into our Savior’s life a myste- 
rious and peculiar relation to nature. In that re- 
lation the love of the Creator who made all things 
was combined with the love of the God-Man who 
came to redeem even nature from the curse of 
sin. We shall see how later, as a teacher, He 
turned to good account what He had seen and ex- 
perienced of nature in His early years. 
Although His vocation to be Redeemer and 
Victim weighed heavily upon Him during all His 
public life and ministry; although His war with 


112 MORE JOY 


the priests and the unbelieving Jews forced Him 
to sharpen His revelations with threat and pun- 
ishment and made His eyes flash wrath instead 
of joy; and although, despite all the customary 
kindliness and mildness of our Savior’s face, 
there was never merriment or laughter there,— 
yet His inner joy in God never left Him but was 
always shining forth. ‘‘He that sent me is with 
me, and He hath not left me alone.’’ 44 To offer 
men the joys of truth and grace was His food. 
‘“‘My meat is to do the will of Him that sent 
me.’’ ** Whenever He found sensitive hearts, 
He offered these gifts with all friendliness and 
joyousness, 

Unquestionably His disposition was anything 
but forbidding and gloomy. If at one look and 
one word of His, hard, rugged men left fishing- 
nets and custom-house tables, homes and families, 
to go after Him; if women left their households 
to follow and serve Him; if the last of the 
prophets leaped for joy at the sound of His 
voice; ** if even the crowd round about, although 
confused in mind and fickle of will, were yet at 
times aroused to such enthusiasm as to want to 
make Him king by force; if the children too, felt 


41 8t. John viii, 29; xvi, 32. 48 St. John iii, 29. 
42 §t, John iv, 34. 


JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 113 


drawn to Him and pressed about Him,—all this 
leads us to conclude that the power of attracting, 
like the power of healing, which went out from 
Him, was essentially a power of joy, of that joy 
which is the fragrance and the aroma of love. 
No gloomy pessimism can be perceived in His 
doctrine or His work. He fulfilled the proph- 
ecy: ‘He shall not be sad, nor troublesome.’’ * 
He is the heavenly sower who steps across the 
fields, alert, hopeful, happy, sowing the seed with 
an arm that swings wide and free. He likes best 
to tarry in the lovely country by the Lake of 
Genesareth. When He wishes to be alone, He 
climbs to the mountain heights, as if to breathe 
the air of home. With that joy in nature already 
noted, He gathers His parables and figures from 
the fields and hills, or draws them from His sur- 
roundings. Generally, a quiet, peaceful cheer- 
fulness pervades His parables and His little 
sketches and descriptions of nature and of human 
life. He does not, like the prophets, select the 
majestic scenes, the mighty phenomena, the ca- 
tastrophes, the thunderous voices of nature. He 
chooses the quiet, small, ordinary, simple, 
friendly things. The hen and her chickens, the 
birds that fly care-free from branch to branch, 


44 Isaias xlii, 4. 


114 MORE JOY 


the lilies in their splendid garments, the mustard- 
tree with its feathered tenants, the reeds of the 
Jordan, the pearls of the sea, the simple dove and 
the prudent serpent, the field with soil so vary- 
ing, the growing of the grain, ‘‘first the blade, 
then the ear, afterwards the full corn in the 
ear,’’*° the vine laden with precious fruit, or 
bleeding from the sharp knife of the vine- 
dresser: just such plain, little, unnoticed, nat- 
ural objects are, in His opinion, best adapted 
to be figures of what is supreme and eternal. 
Thus in the ‘‘Our Father’’ He fills the simplest 
words with the weightiest content; and, in the 
Kucharist, He hides His own nature in the plain 
form of bread. 

His reverent treatment of nature, His associ- 
ating of nature in the teaching of eternal truth, 
and the immediate service of God and the work 
of salvation, has again taught men reverence for 
nature and enjoyment of nature even in its in- 
Significant and common forms. It has awak- 
ened the Christian love of nature, unlocked a 
thousand sources of joy, and infinitely enriched 
the joy content of the ordinary life. Here again 
we See the proof that Christ is not the negation 
but the supreme affirmation of life. In Him is 
not ‘*Yea and Nay,’’ but only ‘‘Yea.’’ * 


45 §t. Mark iv, 28. 48 IT Corinthians i, 19. 


JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 115 


How happy and full of joy was our Savior’s 
association with His disciples! It is significant 
that His first journey in their company was to a 
wedding, and that at a wedding He performed 
His first miracle. The Messiah is certainly no 
foe of happiness, but rather the one to whom men 
may venture to apply when the wine of joy gives 
out. Instead of the water of merely natural joy, 
which only pleases the palate, He bestows the 
wine of that higher joy which infuses new life 
into the whole being; and the Virgin Mother 
too, graciously appears as mediatrix of Joy. 
When defending His disciples against the phar- 
isaical reproach of not fasting, Our Savior com- 
pares His life and theirs to a wedding: ‘‘Can 
the children of the bridegroom mourn, as long as 
the bridegroom is with them? But the days will 
come when the bridegroom shall be taken away 
from them, and then they shall fast.’’ 

How His eyes must have brightened when, at 
the return of the disciples from their first mis- 
Sion journey, ‘‘He rejoiced in the Holy Ghost, 
and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of 
heaven and earth, because thou hast hidden these 
things from the wise and prudent, and hast re- 
vealed them to little ones. Yea, Father, for so 

47 §t. Matthew ix, 15. 


116 MORE JOY 


it hath seemed good in thy sight.’’ ** Then, for 
the first time, the disciples must have rejoiced in 
their innermost souls at their holy vocation. 
True, only three chosen ones enjoyed the happi- 
ness of Tabor, and it passed quickly despite 
Peter’s attempt to prolong it. Yet all the dis- 
ciples were permanently partners in His Joy. 
In the final hours of their life together, He 
comforts them, before His passion: ‘‘Let not 
your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid.’’ * 
He promises that their sorrow shall be changed 
into joy and speaks certain things to them, ‘‘that 
my joy may be in you, and your joy may be 
filled.’’?°° He prays ‘‘that they may have my 
joy filled in themselves.’’° The forty days after 
Easter were a real May-time, a lovely spring; 
and in the hearts of the disciples, a joy then 
ripened which, through the descent of the Holy 
Ghost, became their inalienable possession. 
The joy of salvation; the joy of the Savior, 
whether bleeding in victorious battle against the 
legions of evil, or risen again amid Easter 
Alleluias, or gloriously ascended to Heaven and 
reigning there; the joy of the Holy Ghost; the 
vision of perfect future joy, the reward of 


48 St. Luke x, 21. 50 St. John xv, 11. 
49 St. John xiv, 27. 61 St. John xvii, 13. 


JOY AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 117 


heaven *?—all this remained as a precious legacy 
to the disciples, and has become the portion of 
everyone who is united to the Savior in faith and 
love. The inner experience of the Apostle tes- 
tifies that ‘‘the Kingdom of God is not meat and 
drink; but justice and peace and joy in the Holy 
Ghost.’’°? He names joy second among the 
fruits of the spirit.°* He proclaims as the Chris- 
tian law of life: ‘‘Rejoice in the Lord always; 
again, I say, rejoice,’’°® and, ‘‘Let the peace of 
Christ rejoice in your hearts.’’°* When the first 
Christian communities were organized, ‘‘break- 
ing bread from house to house, they took their 
meat with gladness and simplicity of heart.’’ 
All the trouble, danger and affliction which came 
upon the Christians in times of persecution 
could not cause anything more than a quasi-sad- 
ness in the midst of real permanent joy, ‘‘as 
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.’’** During 
centuries of the most frightful and bloody per- 
secution, amid pain and torment, in flames and 
funeral-pyres, in rackings and scourgings, in 
the darkest depths of dungeons, this indestruct- 
ible joy has always kept up its exultant song. 


52 §t. Matthew xxv, 21; I St. Peter i, 6-8. 

53 Romans xiv, 17. 56 Colossians iii, 15. 

54 Galatians v, 22. 57 Acts ii, 46. 

55 Philippuns iv, 4. 58 II Corinthians vi, 10. 


XI 
JOY AND HOLINESS 


The halo, that mark of particular honor with 
which art adorns the heads of the saints, is a 
symbol of their heavenly glory; but it also re- 
minds us of the halo of joyousness and kindliness 
encircling their features even during mortal 
life. It is because of an utter misunderstanding 
that worldlings are unable to conceive of a saint 
without the attributes of sadness, pessimism and 
melancholy. As a matter of fact, the essential 
characteristic of a saint is joyfulness. 

In old legends, and occasionally in life, we 
meet with ‘‘whimsical saints’’; but, either they 
are not saints at all, or else their oddity has a 
gracious side. In no case should unfriendly, 
ill-tempered oddity be adinired or imitated. 
The saints themselves have spoken very 
strongly against melancholy gloom. St. Fran- 
cis of Assisi, calls it the Babylonian malady, 
and St. Catherine of Siena, says that it is brought 


on by Satan who, when he sees that he cannot 
118 


JOY AND HOLINESS 119 


tempt the soul to sensuality, which destroys con- 
stancy, and renders the heart narrow, weak and 
cowardly, endeavors to excite trouble, disgust, 
sadness and scruples of conscience. M. Ohier 
says that sadness inclines the soul to desire sen- 
sible consolations which, although they appear to 
come from God, are in reality born of sensuality 
and self-deception. St. Teresa tells us plainly: 
“T fear nothing so much as to see my daughters 
lose this joy of the soul, for I know, to my cost, 
what a discontented religious is like.’’* 

It cannot be expected or required that this 
cheerful, friendly quality should be equally 
prominent and attractive in the lives of all the 
saints. Natural disposition, temperament, and 
the like, play an important part. But joy can 
never be entirely lacking in any real saint, even 1n 
the most austere ascetic or the strictest preacher 
of penance. It comes into view like the first ray 
or fore-gleam of the saintly halo and the heavenly 
glory. In this respect, too, the saints must show 
themselves to be the disciples and the images of 
Christ, so that ‘‘the goodness and kindness of 
God our Savior’’? may appear in them as it 

1Henri Joly, The Psychology of the Saimts, English Translation, 


London and New York, 1902, p. 173. 
2 Titus iii, 4. 


Leo MORE JOY 


appeared in His own human nature. An essen- 
tial element of holiness, therefore, is the hearty, 
practical, tireless effort to give joy to others, to 
comfort the afflicted, and to throw sunshine upon 
every need of body and soul. This beneficent 
external activity makes the saints look like 
‘‘royal administrators of affairs.”’ 

Fundamentally, holiness cannot mean any- 
thing else but a reshaping and uplifting of 
earthly life into life with God, in God, for God,— 
true and real, although always imperfect and 
subject to earthly limitations. It is effected by 
means of permanent attention to God’s pres- 
ence, constant performance of His will, and 
steady intercourse with Him in prayer. With 
it comes a true and real, even though imperfect, 
participation in God’s glory and blessedness, and 
an inflowing and overflowing of these into the hu- 
man heart and life, not in a full stream, but drop 
by drop. The result is that wonderful gentle- 
ness and patience, that peace and steadfastness, 
that uniform joyousness, that permanent, even 
temper and disposition, which shines out of the 
eyes, lights up the face, puts music in the voice, 
and, like a bright blue sky, stretches over the 
whole of life, imparting joy to everyone. 

Thus happiness and holiness go together. St. 


JOY AND HOLINESS 121 


Augustine* teaches that the greatest possible 
happiness comes from the possession of truth. 
St. Catherine of Siena represents God as utter- 
ing the following words with regard to souls that 
have arrived at perfection: ‘‘. . . Then this soul 
chants a delightful canticle, playing 1ts own ac- 
companiment upon an instrument whose strings 
have been so well tuned by prudence that they 
give out a holy harmony to the glory and honor 
of My name. .. . The perfect are pleasing even 
to the world itself, whether it will or not; for the 
wicked cannot keep from hearing the sweetness 
of this harmony. Many even are so captivated 
by it that they abandon death to return to life. 
All of My saints have thus captivated souls. 
This harmony was first heard when My Well- 
Beloved Word, clothing Himself with your hu- 
manity and uniting it to His Divinity, gave forth 
from the Cross this ineffable music which capti- 
vated the human race. .. . All of you who pro- 
duce these harmonies are the disciples of this 
Good Master. It is by means of His sweet 
melody that the glorious Apostles captivated so 
many souls when all over the world they sowed 
this word which they had learned from My Well- 
Beloved Son. It is to the same harmony that 
3 De Lib. Arbitr. L. II, ec. 13, n. 35. 


122 MORE JOY 


the martyrs, the confessors, the doctors, and the 
virgins owe the same victories.’’ * 

‘The characteristic of all those who have at- 
tained to perfect love of God, is an exceptional 
and imperturbable happiness, a cheerfulness so 
surprising, so permanent, so frank and childlike, 
that the prejudiced children of this world are 
tempted to get vexed at it.... Whoever en- 
counters souls of this kind, perceives from their 
very appearance that their condition does not de- 
pend on the world around them but originates in 
their own spiritual depths. Their minds are 
not easily upset by storms, for their lives are 
built upon God who is inaccessible to the dis- 
turbing influence of the elements. They have 
naught to fear from God; they are at peace with 
themselves. Why then, should they not be 
happy 9 978 

The legends and biographies of many saints 
draw especial attention to their brighter side and 
record telling instances of their joyousness and 
friendliness. We are now going to construct a 
little garden of joy out of short selections from 
these. 


4 Dialogue de Sainte Catherine de Sienne, traduit de L’Italien par 
E. Cartier, Paris, 1855, c. 147. 

5 Weiss, Apologie, III2 831. Cf. S. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., 
2a, 2%, q. 28, a. 1. 


OE 
A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 


At the head of this list of saints must be placed 
the one whom we reverence particularly as Queen 
of All Saints. When, with the Church, we greet 
Mary as ‘‘Cause of our Joy’’ and ‘‘Comforter 
of the Afflicted,’’ this is no exaggeration; we are 
simply saying what to us is perfectly clear and 
true. From the very fact of her absolute sinless- 
ness, and her dignity as Mother of God, we may 
deduce her possession of the most wonderful kind 
of joy. Like a crystal fountain, springing out of 
unfathomed depths, the Magnificat rises jubilant 
to heaven. That Mary is also ‘‘Mother Most 
Sorrowful,’’ in no way lessens her joy; it only 
renders her all the more capable of being ‘*Com- 
forter of the Afflicted’? and ‘‘Cause of Joy’’ to 
poor mankind. ‘The many delicate, pure, warm 
joys woven into the Christian’s life through 
childlike intercourse with our Blessed Mother 
cannot be imagined by one who neither knows nor 
cares anything about her. 

* 
123 


124 MORE JOY 


Note the counsel of the Shepherd of Hermas 
in the second century.? 

‘Put away,’’ said he, ‘‘grief from yourself, 
for this is a sister of doubt and bitterness... . 
Do you not perceive that grief is more evil than 
all the spirits, and is most terrible to the servants 
of God, and corrupts man beyond ail the spirits, 
and wears out the Holy Spirit? ... Therefore 
put on joyfulness, which always is agreeable and 
acceptable to God, and rejoice in it. For every 
cheerful man does good deeds and has good 
thoughts, and despises grief; but the mournful 
man always acts wickedly. . . . Cleanse yourself 
from this wicked grief, and you shall live to God; 
and all shall live to God who cast away from 
themselves grief and put on all joyfulness.”’ 

* 

Speaking of the solitaries of the Egyptian 
Thebaid, Rufinus tells us: ‘‘They were always 
cheerful and full of such spiritual joy as few have 
experienced upon earth. None was sad, and if 
one ever appeared so, at once the holy Abbot 
Apollonius asked for the cause. He often told 
them that a man who placed his salvation in God 
and his hope in heaven could not be sad. Pagans 


1 Mand. x, 2, 3. English translation by Kirsopp Lake, The Apos- 
tolic Fathers, vol. II, London and New York, 1913, pp. 115 f. 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 125 


might have cause to mourn, Jews to weep and 
lament, sinners to be troubled; but the just should 
be glad and cheerful.’’ Salvation in God and 
hope in heaven! It would be impossible to sum 
up more concisely the main sources of Christian 
~ cheerfulness. 

The same St. Apollonius, who founded a mon- 
astery of five hundred monks near Heliopolis, 
often spoke of the dangerous consequences of 
sadness and recommended that spiritual joy 
which must be joined with the tears of penance, 
—the joy which springs from love and without 
which the glow of devotion in the soul is soon ex- 
tinguished. He himself possessed this joyous- 
ness in the highest degree, and his look of glad- 
ness was the sign by which strangers recognized 
him. How much pedagogical wisdom and what 
a sound conception of true penance and true piety 
his recommendation shows. The stronger and 
truer our sorrow for sin, the more necessary and 
the better justified will be our cheerfulness born 
of the love of God. 

Even in the last hours of his extremely morti- 
fied life, St. Pachomius displayed the same radi- 
ant features, the same gay, cheerful look that 
were habitual with him. And concerning a soli- 
tary of the Scythian Desert, we read that, even 


126 MORE JOY 


after his brethren supposed him to be already 
dead, he opened his mouth again and thrice 
laughed heartily for joy at having lived and died 
as God had appointed for him.? 

St. Anthony the Great, called ‘‘Star of the 
Desert’’ and ‘‘Father of Monks,’’ who died 
about 356 A.D., at the age of one hundred 
and five years, is represented by his biographer, 
St. Athanasius, as so cheerful looking, that 
strangers could always recognize him even in a 
crowd.® 

% 

St. Basil the Great (+ 379 A. D.), according 
to St. Gregory Nazianzen, lived so ascetic a life 
that he was without flesh and almost without 
blood; and, in his own words, he no longer 
had a body. Yet he was far from being 
sad or melancholy. His gentleness and pa- 
tience were literally inexhaustible. His un- 
varying mildness amazed the pagan Libanius. 
When the Prefect Modestus tried to force him 
into communion with the Arians by menacing 
him with confiscation, banishment, torture, and 
death, and Basil only despised these threats, the 
Prefect said: ‘‘No one has ever before spoken 


2 Weiss, Apologie, III 2 835. 
8 Vita 8. Antoniti M, Acta Sanctorum, die XVII, Ian., ec. xvi, n. 89. 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE § 127 


so boldly to Modestus.’’ St. Basil answered: 
‘*Perhaps you have never before had to deal with 
a Christian Bishop. Usually we Bishops are 
the mildest of all men; but when religion is at 
stake, we have God alone before our eyes and de- 
Spise everything else; fire, sword, wild beasts, 
iron tongs, then become a delight to us.”’ 

In St. Martin, Bishop of Tours (+ about 400 
A. D.), the faith and the power of Eliseus seemed 
to be renewed. His uninterrupted communion 
with God in prayer was no hindrance to his avail- 
ing himself of every opportunity to make jokes 
that were both amusing and edifying.’ 


% 


Among the writings of St. Chrysostom (+ 407 
A.D.) are seventeen letters to the deaconess 
Olympia. This noble and cultured virgin ex- 
perienced great depression and sadness, not only 
because of her own great sufferings and persecu- 
tions, but much more because of the frightful 
storms that had broken upon the Church and her 
spiritual father Chrysostom. In these letters, 
written by the Saint amid the unspeakable suf- 
ferings and privations of exile and during, or 
after, severe illness, he labors with tireless pa- 


4Sulpic. Sever., Dial. II, 10. 


128 MORE JOY 


tience and perseverance to heal her troubled soul. 
He strives to deliver her from sadness, which is 
a grave malady of souls, an inexpressible tor- 
ment, a worm-gnawing at the mind, a secret 
fever, worse than the cruelest tyrant; and also to 
inspire her with deep, abiding cheerfulness.’ 
He never tires of repeating that piety depends 
less upon external circumstances than upon one’s 
attitude of mind. Nothing could be more touch- 
ing than the way in which from Christian teach- 
ings, the example of our Savior and the Apostles, 
and his own pains and trials, he prepares a balm 
which with soft, tender hands he lays upon the 
wounded spirit. Then again, with the sternness 
of a physician, he reproves Olympia for having 
pleased the devil by fostering sadness and gloom- 
iness.° And finally he sings triumphantly of 
victory over sadness which has been conquered 
by joy. 

How harmful sadness is and how necessary joy 
is to the Christian, has hardly ever been more 
emphatically declared and more thoroughly ex- 
plained than in these touching letters whose 
power to console and gladden can be tested by 


many a sick soul even to-day. 
*% 


5 Letters, 3, n. 2. 6 Letters, 14, n. 4. 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 129 


St. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola (+ 431), united 
to his keen practical wisdom a charming spright- 
liness which enchanted everyone acquainted with 
him and even now smiles out at us from his writ- 

ings. 
ee 

St. Deicolus, born in Ireland in the sixth cen- 
tury, was a disciple of St. Columba, whom he ac- 
companied to England and France. He became 
Abbot of the Monastery of Ltiders. It is said 
that the holy joy of his soul was reflected so 
brightly in his face that it affected all who saw 
him. Even his teacher and master, Columba, 
wondered and once asked him how it happened 
that he was always so cheerful and contented. 
Deicolus answered simply: ‘‘It comes from the 
thought that nothing can rob me of my God.’’ 
Thus he indicated plainly and profoundly the 
source of his joy, the foundation of his constancy 
and unfailing confidence. 


* 


Of St. Romuald (+ 1027), the founder of the 
austere order of Camaldoli, his biographer, St. 
Peter Damian, says, in old age his cheerfulness 
still remained so simple and childlike that no one, 
even those whose hearts were full of bitterness, 


130 MORE JOY 


could see him without being joyfully dis- 
posed. 
& 

It is said of St. Bernard (1091-1153) that his 
inexpressible sweetness gave his extremely pale 
and emaciated features an angelic beauty which 
attracted everybody and greatly contributed to 
his extraordinary popularity. He used to de- 
clare that nothing could ever be done by men who 
did not guide others in the spirit of kindness. 
According to Mohler, his writings of convincing 
clearness, of finished form, of melodious and 
fascinating eloquence, flowed from his soul like 
a limpid stream to refresh and heal. They 
seemed to be an emanation of his own spiritual 
power and sweetness. A bishop has said that 
kindness, if able to preach sermons or write 
books, would express itself just like St. Bern- 
ard. He loved nature and used to learn from 
the earth, the trees, the fields, the flowers and the 
grass. ‘Believe one who has tried,’’ he writes, 
‘‘vou Shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods 
than in books. The trees and the rocks will 
teach you that which you cannot hear from mas- 
ters.77.* 


7Letter 106. Life and Works of St. Bernard (ed. Mabillon), 
Translated by Samuel J. Earles, London, 1889. 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE § 131 


His kindness extended even to brute beasts. 
At sight of a hare chased by hounds, or of a poor 
little bird pursued by birds of prey, his heart 
grew heavy. He could not keep from making 
the sign of the cross in the air to rescue the in- 
nocent little creatures, and his blessing always 
brought them good fortune. He used to say, ‘‘If 
mercy were a sin, I believe I could not keep from 
committing it.’’ 

¥ 

St. Dominic (1170-1221), amid his apostolic 
labors, manifested so imperturbable a cheerful- 
ness that all believed they saw a heavenly ra- 
diance upon his face. The day he dedicated to 
joy; for the night he kept the tears and flagel- 
lations with which he besought God’s mercy upon 
the misery of the world. 


* 


How could anyone speak of holy joy and of 
the joy of the holy, without knowing and naming 
St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), poor ‘‘ Brother 
Hver-Glad,’’ master of joy, and especially of joy 
in suffering, the one whom a non-Catholic ® has 
recently called the most fortunate man that ever 
lived, the true ‘‘ Happy Hans’’! His joyfulness 


8 Julius Hart in the Berlin Tag, 1905, Nr. 627. 


132 MORE JOY 


was a natural gift. Hven before his conversion, 
when during the war against Perugia, he spent 
a year in prison, he astonished his companions 
with his constant cheerfulness and incessant sing- 
ing. Throughout his life of poverty and exter- 
nal hardship he was always rich in joy. For 
him the strains of pain and joy commingled; yea, 
the deepest pain to him was a source of the high- 
est joy. He himself affirmed this in a remark- 
able dialogue with Brother Leo which we here 
insert. 

“One day, as St. Francis was going with 
Brother Leo from Perugia to Santa Maria degli 
Angioli, in the winter, and suffering a great deal 
from the cold, he called to Brother Leo, who 
was walking on before him, and said to him: 
‘Brother Leo, if it were to please God that the 
Brothers Minor should give, in all lands, a great 
example of holiness and edification, write down, 
and carefully observe, that this would not be a 
cause for perfect joy.’ <A little farther on, St. 
Francis called to him a second time: ‘O Brother 
Leo, if the Brothers Minor were to make the lame 
to walk, if they could make straight the crooked, 
chase away demons, restore sight to the blind, 
give hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and, 
what is even a far greater work, raise the dead 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 133 


after four days, write that this would not be a 
cause for perfect joy.’ Shortly after, he cried 
out again: ‘O Brother Leo, if the Brothers Minor 
knew all languages; if they were versed in all 
science; if they could explain all Scriptures; if 
they had the gift of prophecy, and could reveal, 
not only all future things, but likewise the se- 
crets of all consciences and all souls, write that 
this would not be a cause for perfect joy.’ After 
proceeding a few steps farther, he cried out again 
with a loud voice: ‘O Brother Leo, little Lamb 
of God! if the Brothers Minor could speak with 
the tongues of angels; if they could explain the 
course of the stars; if they knew the virtues of 
all plants; if all the treasures of the earth were 
revealed to them; if they were acquainted with 
the various qualities of all birds, of all fish, of all 
animals, of men, of trees, of stones, of roots, and 
of waters,—write that this would not be a cause 
for perfect joy.’ Shortly after, he cried out 
again: ‘O Brother Leo, if the Brothers Minor 
had the gift of preaching so as to convert all 
infidels to the faith of Christ, write that this 
would not be a cause for perfect joy.’ Now this 
discourse having lasted for the space of two 
miles, Brother Leo wondered much within him- 
self; and, questioning the saint, he said: 


134 MORE JOY 


‘Father, I pray thee teach me where to find cause 
for perfect joy.’ St. Francis answered: Ef, 
when we shall arrive at Santa Maria degli An- 
gioli, all drenched with rain and trembling with 
cold, all covered with mud and exhausted from 
hunger; if, when we knock at the convent-gate, 
the porter should come angrily and ask us who 
we are; 1f, after we have told him that we are two 
of his brothers, he should answer angrily, ‘“What 
you say is not the truth; you are but two impos- 
tors going about to deceive the world, and take 
the alms of the poor; begone I say ;’’ if he refuses 
to open to us, and leaves us outside, exposed to 
the snow and rain, suffering from cold and hun- 
ger till night arrives,—then, if we accept such 
injustice, such cruelty, and such contempt with 
patience, without being ruffled, and without mur- 
muring, believing with humility and charity that 
the porter really knows us, and that it is God who 
makes him speak thus against us,—O Brother 
Leo, write down that this is a cause for perfect 
joy. And if we knock again, and the porter 
comes out in anger to send us away, as if we were 
vile impostors, with oaths and blows, and saying, 
‘‘Begone, miserable robbers! go to the hospital, 
for you shall neither eat nor sleep here!’’; if he 
takes hold of a knotted stick, and, seizing us by 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 135 


the cowl, throws us on the ground; if we bear 
all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking 
of the sufferings of our blessed Lord, O Brother 
Leo, write that here, finally is cause for perfect 
joy. And now, Brother, listen to the conclusion. 
Above all the graces and all the gifts of the Holy 
Spirit which Christ grants to His friends, is the 
grace of overcoming oneself, and accepting will- 
ingly, out of love to Christ, sufferings, injuries, 
discomforts, and contempt.’ ’’® 

Constant cheerfulness and friendliness in God 
were in fact the chief characteristics of St. Fran- 
cis and the main sources of his influence. 

* 10 

Francis cried out: ‘‘We Friars, Minor, 
what are we other than God’s singers and play- 
ers, who seek to draw hearts upwards and to fill 
them with spiritual joy?’’ To play good people 
into heaven, to sing before every one’s door about 
the beauty and delight of serving the Lord—this 
Francis had tried personally in Assisi, and he 


9 The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, English Translation, 
London, 1887, ch. viii. 

10The rest of the description down to page 149 is not from 
Bishop Keppler’s text, but is a series of passages quoted directly 
from the English translation of a source upon which he largely de- 
pends, Saint Francis of Assisi; A Biography, by Johannes Jérgen- 
sen. Translated from the Danish by T. O’Conor Sloane, Longmans, 
Green, & Co., New York and London, 1913, passim, pp. 178-333. (Tr.) 


136 MORE JOY 


assigned the same troubadour’s ways to his 
Brothers. ‘‘Do you not know, dearest Brother,’’ 
he asked Brother Giles, ‘‘that holy contrition 
and holy humility and holy charity and holy joy 
make the soul good and happy?’’ There were 
many who in St. Francis of Assisi’s time did not 
know this, and therefore God’s singers, jocula- 
tores Dei, went out into the world to sing this 
into the hearts of men. 

Francis’ work as lawgiver was only occasional. 
At a Chapter it was told him that many of the 
Brothers tormented themselves with penitential 
shirts, iron rings and the like on the naked body. 
He forbade at once the use of such ascetic things 
by the Brothers. Another time he had the fol- 
lowing regulation put into writing: ‘‘Let the 
Brothers take care that they do not present the 
appearance of hypocrites, with dark and east- 
down mien, but that they show themselves glad 
in the Lord, cheerful and worthy of love, and 
agreeable.”’ 

Against such and all other trials and tempta- 
tions Francis over and over again advised his 
Brothers to use three remedies—the first was 
prayer, the second was obedience, such that one 
willingly did another’s will, the third was the 
evangelical joy in the Lord, which drives away 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE § 137 


all evil and dark thoughts. In these three pre- 
cepts Francis set the best example to his Broth- 
ers. 

The third means for obtaining peace, which 
Francis pointed out to his disciples, was constant 
cheerfulness. 

‘Let those who belong to the devil hang their 
heads—we ought to be glad and rejoice in the 
Lord,’’ said he. Melancholy was ‘‘the sin of 
Babylon,’’ because it led back to the abandoned 
Babylon of the world. ‘‘When the soul is 
troubled, lonely and darkened, then it turns easily 
to the outer comfort. and to the empty enjoyments 
of the world.’’ Therefore Francis repeated over 
and over again the words of the Apostle: ‘'Re- 
joice always!’’ He never wanted to see dark 
faces or sour visages—his Brothers should not be 
mournful hypocrites, but glad children of light. 
To those who asked how this was possible, he an- 
swered, ‘‘Spiritual joy arises from purity of the 
heart and perseverance in prayer!’’ Only sin 
and torpidity are able to extinguish or darken the 
light in the heart. ‘*‘When the soul is cold,”’ said 
Francis, ‘‘and gradually becomes untrue to grace, 
then it must be flesh and blood that are seeking 
their own!”’ 

In recompense for this complete renunciation, 


138 MORE JOY 


Francis accepted also perfect joy. There were 
times and hours when there was a perfect song 
within his soul, and he would begin at last to hum 
the melody he heard within himself, hum it in 
French as in the old days when he went out with 
Brother Giles to announce the Gospel. Clearer 
and clearer would the melody sound to him, and 
stronger and stronger did it rise in him,— 
next he would snatch up a couple of pieces of 
wood or two boughs, place one to his chin as if it 
were a violin, and draw the other one across it 
as the bow is used in playing the violin. Louder 
and louder would he sing, more and more ea- 
gerly did he carry out his imitation playing 
whose melody none but himself could hear, while 
he rhythmically rocked his body back and forth 
with the tune. Finally his feelings would over- 
come him, and letting the violin and bow fall he 
would burst into scalding tears, and sink into his 
Own soul as into a great wave. 

On the thirtieth of September, Francis with 
Brother Leo left Mount Alverna ... heard 
Mass early in the morning with his Brothers in 
the little chapel, and gave them a last admonition. 
Then he took leave of each one in turn—of 
Masseo, Angelo, Silvestro, Illuminato. ‘‘Live 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 189 


in peace, dearest sons, and farewell! My body is 
to be separated from you, but my heart remains 
with you. I go forth with Brother Little Lamb 
of God to Portiuncula, and I come back here no 
more! Farewell, Sacred Mountain: farewell, 
Mount Alverna: farewell, thou Angel Mountain! 
Farewell, dearest Brother Falcon, who used to 
wake me with thy screams, thanks for thy care of 
me! Farewell, thou great stone, beneath which 
I used to pray; thee I shall see no more! Fare- 
well, Santa Maria’s Church—to thee, Mother of 
Eternal Word, I commend these my sons.’’ 
Whilst the Brothers who remained behind broke 
into lamentations, Francis went forth for the last 
time from the mountain, where so great a thing 
had befallen him. . . . He stopped on the top of 
Mount Casella, whence the last view of La Verna 
is to be had, and he dismounted and knelt down. 
And with his glance directed to the distant La 
Verna, that far away lifted its ridge up under 
the heavy autumn clouds, he made the sign of the 
Cross over it and broke out into a last farewell, 
a last thanksgiving and a last blessing. 
‘‘Marewell, thou mountain of God, thou holy 
mountain, Mons coagulatus, mons pinguts, mons 
in quo beneplacitum est Deo habitare! Farewell, 


140 MORE JOY 


Mount Alverna God the Father, God the Son, 
God the Holy Ghost, bless thee. Live in peace, 
but I shall never see thee more.’’ 


It was in the summer of 1225, and the blinding 
Italian sun had evidently been bad for Francis’ 
eyes. or a time he was quite blind and was in- 
cidentally plagued by a swarm of field mice, who 
probably had their home in the straw walls of the 
hut, and who eventually ran over his face, so that 
he had no peace by day or night. Apparently 
never before had Francis been more depressed 
and unfortunate. And yet it was precisely in 
this wretched sickness, in the midst of the dark- 
ness of blindness and of the plague of mice, that 
he composed his wonderful masterpiece, Canti- 
cum fratris solis, the Canticle of our Brother 
Sun. 

To understand the Sun Song we must under- 
stand Francis’ relations to nature. N othing 
would be more unjust than to call him a pantheist. 
He never confounded himself or God with na- 
ture, and the pantheist’s alternations of wild or- 
gies and pessimistic melancholy was quite foreign 
tohim. Francis never, like Shelley, wished to be 
one with the universe; neither did he, with Wer- 
ther or Turgenieff, shudder as feeling himself 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 141 


abandoned to the blind inevitableness of things 
and to nature’s ‘‘everlastingly ruminating mon- 
sters.’’ Trancis’ standpoint as to the conception 
of nature is entirely and only the first article of 
faith—he believed in a Father who was also a 
creator. 

And out of this common relationship with the 
one and same Father he saw in all living beings, 
yes, in all that is created, only brothers and sis- 
ters. In the kingdom of the heavenly Father 
there are many mansions, but only one family. 
This thought is not Greek, and is not German, it 
is true Hebraic and therefore truly Christian. 
The song of praise which Ananias, Azarias, and 
Misael sang in the fiery furnace of the Babylon- 
ian tyrant, and which has gone down to the 
Church, as it were an inheritance from the syna- 
gogue, contains the following: 


**All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord: praise and 
exalt him above all for ever. 

O ye angels of the Lord, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye heavens, bless the Lord: ... 

O all ye waters that are above the heavens, bless the 
Lord: 

O all ye powers of the Lord, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye sun and moon, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye stars of heaven, bless the Lord: ... 

O every shower and dew, bless ye the Lord: ... 


142 MORE JOY 


O all ye spirits of God, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye fire and heat, bless the Lord: .. . 

O ye cold and heat, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye ice and snow, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye nights and days, bless the Lord: .. . 

O ye light and darkness, bless the Lord: .. . 

O ye lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord: ... 

O let the earth bless the Lord; let it praise and exalt 
him above all for ever. 

O ye mountains and hills, bless the Lord: .. . 

O all ye things that spring up in the earth, bless th 
Borde 2) | 

O ye fountains, bless the Lord: .. . 

O ye seas and rivers, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, bless the 
Bord; Wye. 

O ye fowls of the air, bless the Lord: ... 

O all ye beasts and cattle, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye sons of men, bless the Lord: .. . 

O let Israel bless the Lord: let them praise and exalt 
him above all for ever. 

O ye priests of the Lord, bless the Lord: . . . 

O ye servants of the Lord, bless the Lord: . . . 

O ye spirits and souls of the just, bless the Lord: ... 

O ye holy and humble of heart, bless the Lord: .. . 

Blessed art thou in the firmament of heaven, and worthy 
of praise and exalted above for ever.’’ 


There is no tone missing in this Symphony of 
all creatures, where all sing together in the great 
song of praise from cherubim to atom. Morning 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 143 


after morning, year after year, Francis, alone 
or with the Brothers, had sung out of their Bre- 
viaries daily this hymn of all creatures to the 
Creator. The poetry of it had won him early; 
in 1213 he raised a little chapel between S. Gemini 
and Porcaria, and had sentences such as these 
painted on the antependium of the altar: ‘All 
who fear the Lord, praise Him! Praise the 
Lord, heaven and earth! Praise Him, all riv- 
ers! All creatures, praise the Lord! All birds 
of heaven, praise the Lord!’’ Francis’ preach- 
ing to the birds at Bevagna is based on the same 
ideas: the birds are obliged to praise and bless 
their good Creator, who has cared so well for 
them; for all beings it is undoubted happiness to 
exist, and it is their simple, filial duty to thank 
their Father for life. 

Francis’ feelings about nature gave him a pre- 
dilection for all that justified such an optimism. 
He turned with special joy to all the lightsome, 
beautiful and bright in his surroundings—to the 
light and fire, the pure running water, flowers and 
birds. This feeling about nature was half sym- 
bolic—Francis loved the water because it sym- 
bolized the sacred penitence by which the soul 
is purified, and because Baptism is effected by 
water. ‘l'herefore he had such great reverence 


144 MORE JOY 


for water that, when he washed his hands, 
he turned so that the drops which fell could not 
be trod under foot. Over stones and rocky 
ground he went with special carefulness, while 
he thought of him who is called the chief corner- 
stone. The Brother who cut wood in the forest 
he ordered to leave a part of the tree standing, so 
that there might be some hope of its putting forth 
branches again—in honor of the Cross of Christ. 
He had the gardener arrange a bed where flowers 
would grow—to remind the Brothers of Him who 
is the Lily of Sharon. 

But he possessed an entirely direct love of na- 
ture. Fire and light seemed to him so beautiful 
that he never could endure having a candle ex- 
tinguished or a lamp put out. There was to be 
a place in the convent garden, not only for the 
kitchen vegetables, but also for the sweet-smelling 
herbs and for ‘‘our brothers the Flowers,”’ so 
that every one who observed their beauty would 
be induced to praise God. He tenderly bent over 
the young of ‘‘our brothers the Robins’’ in Grec- 
cio, and in Siena built nests for turtle-doves. If 
he saw an earthworm lying on the road and twist- 
ing about helplessly, he would take it up and 
carry it to the side, so that it would not be 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 145 


crushed. In winter he put honey into the hives 
for the bees to feed on. 

Hivery being was for Francis a direct word 
from God. Like all pious souls he realized in 
the highest degree the worth of all things and had 
_ reverence for them as for something precious and 
holy. He understood God’s presence among his 
creatures; when he felt the immovable firmness 
and strength of the cliffs and rocks, he directly 
felt that God is strong and to be trusted. The 
sight of a flower in the silence of the early morn- 
ing or of the mouth of a little bird confidently 
opened revealed to him the pure beauty of God 
and his purity and the endless tenderness of the 
Creator. 

This feeling infused Francis with a constant 
Joy in God, an uninterrupted tendency to thank- 
fulness. In these thanks all beings were to par- 
ticipate and were to appear to have pleasure 
therein. “Our Creator be praised, Brother 
Pheasant,’’ thus Francis addressed the rare bird, 
which a well-wisher had sent him, and the pheas- 
ant stayed with Francis and did not want to be 
with anyone else. ‘‘Sing the praise of God, Sis- 
ter Cicada,’’ he exclaimed under the olive trees 
at Portiuncula, and Sister Cicada sang until 


146 MORE JOY 


Francis bade it be silent. The wild animals 
often kept him company; for example, a hare on 
an island in Lake Thrasimene, a wild rabbit at 
Greccio. Near Siena he was surrounded by a 
flock of sheep; the gentle animals gathered 
around him and bleated, as if they wanted to tell 
him something. Sailing on Lake Rieti he was 
presented with a living fish; he put it into the 
water, and for a long time it followed the boat. 
A bird which was captured in the same place and 
given to him would not leave him until he explic- 
itly commanded it to. 

But above all things Francis was thankful for 
the sun—the sun and the fire. ‘‘In the morn- 
ing,’’ he was wont to say, ‘‘when the sun rises, all 
men ought to praise God, who created it for our 
use, for all things are made visible byit. But in 
the evening, when it is night, all men ought to 
praise God for Brother Fire, which gives our eyes 
light at night. For we are all like the blind, but 
God gives our eyes light by means of these two 
brothers. ’’ 

The Sun Song had its origin in this idea. In 
his hut in San Damiano Francis lay like a blind 
man and could endure neither sunshine nor the 
light of a fire. And one night his sufferings were 
so great that he called out to God, ‘‘Lord help 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 147 


me so that I can bear my sickness with pa- 
tience!’’ 

Then in spirit it was answered him: ‘‘ Behold 
me, Brother; would you not be very glad if some 
one for these sufferings of thine gave thee so 
- great a treasure that the whole world in com- 
parison therewith is worth nothing?’ And 
Francis answered, ‘‘Yes.’’ But the voice went 
on, ‘‘ Then be glad, Francis, and sing in your sick- 
ness and weakness, for the kingdom of heaven be- 
longeth to thee!’’ 

But Francis arose early the next morning and 
said to the Brothers who sat about him: ‘‘If the 
Emperor had given me the whole Roman king- 
dom, should I not be greatly rejoiced? But now 
the Lord, even while I am living here below, has 
promised me the kingdom of heaven, and there- 
fore it is proper that I should rejoice in my trials 
and thank God the Father and Son and Holy 
Ghost. And therefore I will in his honor and 
for your comfort and the edification of our neigh- 
bors compose a new song of praise about the crea- 
tures of the Lord whom we daily make use of, 
and without whom we could scarcely live, and 
whom we hevertheless so often misuse and 
thereby offend the Creator. And we are con- 
stantly ungrateful and do not think of the grace 


148 MORE JOY 


and beneficence which every day is shown us, and 
we do not thank the Lord, our Creator and the 
Giver of all good things, as we ought to do.”’ 

And Francis sat down and thought. A mo- 
ment after he broke out in the first words of 
the Sun Song, Altissimo, onnipotente, bon Sig- 
nore, ** Highest, almighty, good Lord!”’ 

But when the song was composed in full, his 
heart was full of comfort and joy. And he 
wished straightway that Brother Pacificus should 
take some other Brothers with him and go out 
into the world. And wherever they found them- 
Selves they were to stop and sing the new song of 
praise, and then as servants of God they should 
ask for compensation from their hearers, and the 
compensation should be that they who listened — 
should be converted and become good Christians. 
But the Sun Song itself is this: 


*“Most high omnipotent good Lord, 
Thine are the praises, the glory, the honor, and all bene- 
diction. 
To thee alone, Most High, do they belong, 
And no man is worthy to mention thee. 
Praised be thou, my Lord, with all thy creatures, 
Especially the honored Brother Sun, 
Who makes the day and illumines us through thee. 
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor 
Bears the signification of thee, Most High One. 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 149 


Praised be thou, my Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars, 

Thou hast formed them in heaven clear and precious and 
beautiful. 

Praised be thou, my Lord, for Brother Wind, 

And for the air and cloudy and clear and every weather, 

By which thou givest sustenance to thy creatures. 

Praised be thou, my Lord, for Sister Water, 

Which is very useful and humble and precious and 
chaste. 

Praised be thou, my Lord, for Brother Fire, 

By whom thou lightest the night, 


And he is beautiful and jocund and robust and strong. 
Praised be thou, my Lord, for our sister Mother Earth, 
Who sustains and governs us, 
And produces various fruits with colored flowers and 
herbage. 
Praise and bless my Lord and give him thanks 
And serve him with great humility.’’ 
**Praised be thou, O Lord, for those who give pardon for 
thy love and endure infirmity and tribulation, 
Blessed those who endure in peace, who will be, Most High, 
crowned by thee.’’ 4 
% 


Brother Giles, one of the Poverello’s first dis- 
ciples, was always bright and cheerful, and when 
anyone spoke to him of God, he replied in a 
manner which betokened the great joy reigning 

11 He composed the last two verses later in order to make peace be- 


tween the podestd and the Bishop of Assisi, who were in open strife; 
and he actomplished his purpose. (Tr.) 


150 MORE JOY 


in his heart. Once he asked one of the Broth- 
ers: “‘Hast thou a good heart?’’ and when the 
Brother answered: ‘‘I do not know,’’ Giles 
said: ‘‘Holy contrition, holy humility and holy 
joyfulness make the heart holy and good.” 


% 


St. Clare (1194-1235), the most famous spirit- 
ual daughter of St. Francis, and Foundress of 
the Franciscan Nuns, in her imperturbable 
gladness and happiness resembled and indeed, 
equaled the Seraphic Father. When, during a 
grave illness, they spoke to her of patience, she 
answered with amazement that, from the time 
she had given herself to God, she had never had 
an opportunity to practise patience. ‘‘What 
thanks I owe God! Since with the help of His 
servant Francis I learned the bitter taste of His 
cup of suffering, I have not found anything in 
life capable of disturbing me.”’ 


% 


St. Elizabeth of Thuringia (1207-1231) on the 
very night when she had lost everything and had 
been expelled from her castle, ordered a Te Deum 
to be publicly sung in the Franciscan Church. 
_ Of pious persons who wore sad faces she said, 
‘They look as if they wanted to frighten God: we 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 151 


ought to give God what we have with joy and 
happiness. ’’ 


¥ 


It is said of St. William (Archbishop of 
- Bourges, 1200-1209) that his wonderful simplic- 
ity was united to very deep insight, and his 
cheerful countenance always reflected his inner 
peace. Despite his austere habit of life, he 
never lost that holy joyousness which is virtue’s 
fairest adornment. 


* 


John Ruysbroeck (+ 1381), the famous 
mystic, who ranks next to Gerard Groote and 
Tauler, writes: ‘‘If you took all the pleasures 
of the world and made them into one and show- 
ered the whole of it upon one man, it would be 
nothing compared to the joy of which I speak; 
for in this case, God with all His purity, flows 
into the depths of us, and the soul not only is filled 


but overflows.’’ ?? 
% 


God accustomed Blessed Henry Suso (+ 1365) 
to expect that as soon as a pain left him another 
would take its place. Thus God treated him al- 


12 Rusbrock L’Admirable (Quvres Choisies). Traduit par Ernest 
Hello, Paris, 1869. (L’ornement des noces spirituelles, I, p. 9.) 


152 MORE JOY 


ways, except once when he was left in peace, al- 
though not for long. ‘‘During this season of in- 
action he came to a nunnery, and, being asked by 
his spiritual children how things went with him, 
he replied:—I fear they are going very ill with 
me at present, and for this reason. It is now 
four weeks since anyone has attacked me in my 
person or my good name, quite unlike what used 
to happen to me; so that I fear lest God has for- 
gotten me. Now he had not sat long with them 
at the grate when there came a brother of the 
Order, who called him out, and said:—I was a 
little while ago at a castle, and the lord of it asked 
after you, where you were, and he did this very 
savagely. And then he lifted up his hands, and 
swore before every one that wherever he found 
you, he would run a sword through you. The 
Same thing was also done by several fierce sol- 
diers, his kinsmen, and they have been search- 
ing for you in different monasteries round about 
in order to execute their evil designs upon you. 
Be warned, therefore, and take care of yourself, 
as you love your life.”’ . . . ‘‘When the Servitor 
heard this tale, he replied :—Praised be God, and 
hastening back immediately to the grate, said to 
his daughters :—Be of good cheer, my children. 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 153 


God has been mindful of me, and has not forgot- 


teneme) 2) 
¥ 


Suso himself bears witness to the fact that he 
ever had a tender heart: ‘‘All who ever came 
to me in sorrow, or aggrieved, always received 
some good counsel from me, which made them 
leave me joyful and consoled; for I wept with 
those who wept, and I sorrowed with those who 
were in sorrow, until, like a mother, I brought 
them round again. No one ever caused me any 
suffering however great, but if he only smiled 
kindly on me afterwards, it was all past and over 
in God’s name, as if it had never been. O Lord, 
J will say no more about mankind, for I could 
not even see or hear the needs and sorrows of all 
the little birds and beasts and other creatures of 
God without being pierced to the heart thereby, 
and I used to pray the kind Lord of all to help 


them.” ¥ 
* 


Suso bids us listen to the sweet music played 
on the stretched cords of the man who suffers for 
13 Life of Blessed Henry Suso, Translated by Thomas Francis 


Knox, London, 1865, p. 133. 
14 Jbid., p. 137. 


154 ‘MORE JOY 


God. How grand it sounds! How sweetly it 
rings out. What is it that seems most beautiful 
to the Blessed Trinity? It is a man who in poy- 
erty, shame, and misery, in sickness and spiritual 
destitution, amid all kinds of bitterness, inner 
and outer, and,—hardest of all,—under the yoke 
of obedience, can and does praise God heartily 
and gives thanks to Him with joy.” 


% 


Master Eckhart (+ 1327) recommends us to 
greet every pain in these words: Welcome, my 
one dear, trusted friend! I should hardly have 
expected thee here, nor have hoped to see thee. 
I bow to thee with all submissiveness.* 


* 


St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1880) loved na- 
ture and understood its sweet harmonies. When 
she saw a flowering meadow, she said to her com- 
panions with holy delight: ‘‘Do you not see how 
all these things adore God and speak of God? 
These red flowers show us so plainly the red 
wounds of Jesus Christ.’’ In the spring time 
she sat down at the edge of the wood to listen to 
the singing of the birds and to catch all the mys- 

i5 P. Fr. H. 8. Denifie, Das geistliche Leben. Eine Blumenlese aus 


den Mystikern des XIV Jahrhunderts.2 Freiburg, 1879, 311, 433. 
16 [bid., 182. 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 155 


terious voices of living and sentient nature. The 
wind in the woods and the wild melodies of storm 
and water on the heights of the Apennines, were 
gathered up by her soul into a sigh and a prayer. 
One day, after having looked long at an ant-hill, 
-ghe said: ‘These little creatures, like me, have 
come forth from the holy mind of God; they, 
with the buds and the blossoms, have been ealled 
into existence by Him who created the angels.”’ 
Like all of Siena’s daughters, she took great de- 
light in music and, while doing needlework with 
her companions, sang pious folk-songs in honor 
of Christ and His Mother, pronouncing their 
holy names with such charm that the sweet 
sound lingered long in the ears of her listeners. 
Her glance and words gave out a pure fragrance 
that seemed to come from an angel rather than 
from a human being; and her face was always 
serene and happy. 


St. Bernardine (1380-1444), Siena’s most fa- 
mous son, born in the year of St. Catherine’s 
death, was a missionary and a zealous preacher 
of penance to his countrymen. Even during his 
childhood his playfellows used to say: ‘“‘When 
Bernardine comes, weariness goes.’? And not 
only when he was a boy, but also when monk and 


156 MORE JOY 


missionary, he was ever brimming over with 
genuine Sienese cheerfulness. Alneas Sylvius 
relates that his face was always cheerful, except 
when some public scandal weighed upon him. 
One of the brethren testifies that he was always 
gay, always laughing and jesting. This rather 
scandalized another brother, who later begged 
forgiveness before Bernardine’s dead body 
when he saw the wonders that happened there. 
* 

‘I tell you in truth,’’ said The Friend of God 
(+ after 1419), ‘‘I also was once a man of the 
world, rich and universally beloved, and hence 
I am familiar with the common worldly joys, so 
prolific of evil. But I have also had a taste of 
God’s grace and know how confidentially God 
deals with His friends here in this world. And 
I can say with truth that I myself have often in 
a single brief hour received from God more con- 
solation and joy than if I had at the same instant 
all the consolations and all the joys the world can 
give. And I truly affirm that if the consolation 
and joy of the world were to continue until the 
end of time, yet in comparison with that one brief 
hour of divine consolation, they would be like a 
drop of water compared with the whole ocean.’? 7 

17 Denifle, op. cit., 395, 


a EL eee ee 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 157 


The book Of Spiritual Poverty,’* written by 
an unknown mystic and falsely ascribed to Tau- 
ler, speaks as follows: ‘‘Good souls experience 
more delight and joy in a single day than all 
sinners ever experience. Their labor is pleas- 
-anter than the sinner’s repose—which is little 
enough, for, although ever working and never 
resting, he gets no result from his work. But 
good men are always at rest,—not that they sit 
idle, but their work itself is rest. They have 
what Solomon sought in all things, rest. But 
the sinner in all things has unrest. Let him eat, 
or drink, or sleep, or watch, all is painful. Do 
what he will, his heart never grows happy. 

‘“Men who are truly upright have within them 
the source of all bliss and joy; and no sadness 
ean enter into them, for the Eternal Word, the 
source of bliss and joy to all the angels and saints, 
penetrates them as it does the saints of heaven. 

‘‘Nothing gives more life to the soul than suf- 
fering. It destroys all that is perishable therein, 
and when all that can die is dead, then life re- 
mains there alone; and thus the greatest joy is 
born of the greatest suffering. 

‘“Pain expels pain. When a man has gone 


18 Published by Denifle, Munich, 1877. 
19 Ecclesiasticus xxiv, ll. 


158 MORE JOY 


through all suffering, then he is immune from 
further suffering and lives peacefully in Christ, 
that is to say, in true joy and repose of heart. 
But he who flies pain, will never be free of pain.’’ 


% 


Notwithstanding his great mortification, St. 
Bonaventure (1221-1274) had upon his face a 
confident, cheerful light which could come only 
from interior peace. He wrote, ‘‘The best sign 
of indwelling grace is spiritual joy’’;” and 
again, ‘‘'The heart that is free and joyful with 
good-will is better disposed for the reception of 
grace than the heart that is fettered with sad- 
ness and bitterness; for the Holy Ghost is the 
love and good-will and joy of the Father and the 
Son; and like naturally loves like.’’ 7? 

He died at the Second Council of Lyons and 
the Acts of the Council contain this record: 
‘The Lord gave him a charm so fascinating that 
all who saw him fell in love with him at once.’’ 


* 


St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury (+ 
1242), compared the afflictions of life to a milk 
prepared by God for the nourishment of the soul. 


20 Spec. Discipl., p. 1, ¢. 2. 
21 De Prof. Relig., L. Il, c. 77 (al. 76). 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 159 


“Their bitterness,’ said he, ‘‘is mingled with 
much sweetness and resembles wild honey given 
to feed the soul in the desert of this world.’’ 


*% 


The serenity and calmness of St. Louis of 
France (+ 1270) underwent a fiery test, when he 
lay dangerously ill, a prisoner among the Sara- 
cens in the Holy Land. Even then, however, 
peace never abandoned his soul for a moment; 
and his face wore so sweet a calm that the Sara- 
cens with amazement acknowledged him to be 
the bravest Christian they had ever seen. 


% 


Blessed John Colombini (-+ 1367)—first a rich 
patrician and merchant of Siena, then a penitent, 
a preacher of penance, and the founder of the 
Jesuates—while traveling from place to place 
trained his disciples to enjoy nature in God. 
‘Oh, you dear poor men of God!’’ said he, 
preaching in a woodland meadow carpeted with 
flowers, ‘‘how strictly we are bound to give 
thanks to God. Just think! We are allowed to 
live, to walk about in this beautiful warm sun- 
shine, to see the clear blue sky and to breathe 
the fresh air. Look at the fair flowers so radi- 
ant and lovely in the bright sunshine,—white, 


160 MORE JOY 


golden, orange, blue. If you were to destroy 
one of them, no artist in the whole world could 
restore it. T’ake one in your hand. See how 
finely the violet veins branch through the white 
calyx; how fair and rich and pure it allis!... 
O wondrous world! O beauteous world! O 
great, lovely, mysterious world! O Life! O 
Happiness! O Bliss! O Paradise!’’ 
Suddenly, while still speaking, he sank down 
upon the grass and lay there as if lifeless. Then 
his disciples scattered over the flowering mead- 
ows and each brown figure gathered up many 
flowers. To the very farthest edge of the 
meadow they went, plucking, and plucking, and 
plucking again; then, returning to their master, 
they covered him over with their load of spring 
blossoms. First they covered all his face with a 
great heap of anemones and crocuses. Next they 
hid his brown cowl under masses of snow-white 
daisies. Then they buried his hands and feet in 
hills of blossoms until, at last, he was all flowers, 
and nothing could be seen but a gorgeous and 
fragrant range of flowery mountains. When 
after a long time Colombini awakened from his 
trance and opened his eyes, he found himself 
looking straight into the pure white and glowing 
red calices of the flowers, and with a laugh of de- 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 161 


light he cautiously raised himself up. Then he 
embraced his disciples, gratefully pressing their 
hands, and with song, the little troop went for- 
ward on their wanderings. Even after a long 
stretch of road had been traversed, white anem- 
‘ones and daisies could still be seen hanging in 
the folds of Colombini’s patched brown robe. 
Jorgensen tells this other charming incident: 
Colombini had left his wife, Biagia, and sent her 
in her loneliness this comforting message: ‘‘I 
beg of thee, live not in sadness, but in joy. If 
there is any place that gives thee joy, then go 
thither, and enjoy thyself, so that it be in the 
Lord. Be always cheerful! The more cheerful 
we are, the easier it is to serve God. Christ re- 
joices in us; we should also rejoice in Him. Let 
us shun sadness and bitterness of heart which is 
a snare of the devil, and let us celebrate in our 
souls one long festival for Jesus Christ and for 


all mankind.”’’ 2? 
3% 


It is said that St. Teresa (+ 1582) possessed 
a charming gayety, which made her admired and 
loved by everyone who came near her. When- 
ever possible, she exhorted others to practise this 


22 Das heilige Feuer, eme Legende aus dem alten Siena, Mainz, 
1903. 


162 MORE JOY 


sweet, uniform happiness, and urged them to go 
forward with peace and joy in the path of prayer. 

She said: ‘*We should strive to be cheerful 
and unconstrained; for there are people who 
think it is all over with devotion if they relax 
themselves ever so little.’’?* She had an in- 
ner aversion for what she called the road of fear, 
—especially for the road of servile fear,—in the 
service of the Lord. In the Monastery of St. 
Joseph at Avila may still be seen a little flute 
and drum upon which she used to play like a child 
on holidays. 


* 


St. Philip Neri (1515-1595) whose wit, origi- 
nality, and charming simplicity won Goethe’s 
sympathetic interest, was all things to all men in 
Rome, from the Pope down to the children in the 
streets. He knew how to be scholarly with schol- 
ars; but he liked better to be childlike with chil- 
dren. On beautiful spring days he used to take 
the young people to the famous Tasso oak in the 
garden of St. Onofrio and lead their games. 
Children always had access to him and were at 
liberty to shout and romp about the house. 

23 §t. Teresa of Jesus: The Life, Relations, Maxims and Founda- 


tions Written by the Saint, Edited by John J. Burke, C.S.P., New 
York, 1911, ch. xiii, 1. 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 163 


When people wondered how he could stand it, 
he said, ‘‘I should be glad even to let them chop 
wood on my back, if they only kept free from 
sin.”’ There is more pedagogical wisdom in this 
method than most people perceive. Of St. Phil- 
ip’s sayings and rules of conduct the following 
are noteworthy: ‘‘The true way to make prog- 
ress in virtue is to preserve holy joyousness.’’ 
‘‘A cheerful mind strengthens the heart and 
makes one steadfast in good conduct; hence the 
servant of God must always be good-humored.’’ 
‘‘Charity with happiness, or charity with resig- 
nation, should be our motto always.’’ ‘‘In the 
spiritual life it is much easier to lead the cheerful 
than the sad.’’ 
° ae 

St. Felix of Cantalizio (1515-1587), a Capu- 
chin Friar, was known all over Rome, where for 
over forty years he went about the streets gath- 
ering alms. He always had a happy face, and the 
phrase, “‘Deo Gratias,’’ was ever on his lips, not 
only in return for gifts, but also in return for 
contempt, ridicule, and abuse. On this account 
he came to be named ‘Brother Deogratias.’’ 
When anyone mocked or insulted him, he used to 
answer, ‘‘May God make a saint of thee!’’ 

* 


164 MORE JOY 


St. Andrew Avellini (1521-1608) censured a 
self-centred and sad life, for ‘‘the soul is not 
pure and clear when the face is gloomy and the 
look mournful.”’ 


% 


St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) was as much 
a friend of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost as 
he was an enemy of sadness. To a soul that had 
let itself be possessed by sadness, he said: 
‘‘Stand fast in peace and nourish your soul with 
the sweetness of heavenly love, for without it the 
heart has no life and life no blessedness. Yield 
not at all to sadness, for it is an enemy of piety. 
Why should anything trouble the servant of Him 
who will be our everlasting joy? Nothing 
should be capable of annoying or angering you, 
except sin. And even sorrow for sin must finally 
give way to holy consolation and sweet joy.’’ 
He used to say, ‘‘A saint who is sorrowful is a 
Sorry saint.’’ 

In one of his sermons he declares: ‘‘Man is 
for joy, and joy is for man; it alone can make 
man happy. I think that joy is not joy at all, 
unless it is in a man’s possession. The human 
heart is so dependent upon joy that, without joy, 
it cannot find rest; and joy is true joy only inso- 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 165 


far as it is possessed by the heart of man. God 
has created joy for the happiness of man and He 
has promised it surely and has bound Himself 
to bestow it, not because it is merited in any wise, 
but out of pure goodness and mercy.”’ 

‘‘Live happily,’’ he says in one of his letters, 
‘‘the Lord sees thee and watches over thee with 
love and tenderness.’’ And to a superioress he 
writes: ‘‘*Live in holy joy with your daughters ; : 
by sincere kindness and loving advances, mani- 
fest your motherly heart, so that they may hasten 
joyously to you.”’ 

The more St. Francis suffered, says his friend, 
Bishop Le Camus of Belley,** the quieter he be- 
came,—like the palm tree which roots itself 
deeper the more it is swayed by the wind. Like 
Samson, he looked for honey in the lion’s mouth; 
and he found peace in battle. Like the three 
children in the fiery furnace, he could draw dew 
out of the flames. He discovered roses amid 
thorns, pearls in the ocean’s depths, oil within 
rock and sweetness in the bitterest of bitter 
things. Storms always blew him into some 
haven. From his very enemies he seized hap- 

24The Bishop’s work has been published in English—The Spirit 


of St. Francis de Sales. By Jean Pierre Le Camus, Bishop of Bel- 
ley. Translated by J. S., London, 1910. 


166 MORE JOY 


piness and, like Jonas, he found safety in the 
whale’s belly. | 
He himself said once: ‘‘For some time my 
quiet has been disturbed by opposition and secret 
persecution on all sides; but this gives me a 
peace unsurpassably sweet and lovely. It as- 
sures me of the approaching union of my soul 
with God, which I frankly admit to be not merely 
the chief, but the only, ambition and desire of 
my heart.’’ 
- “Sometimes I tremble for fear that Ged; is giv- 
ing me my Heaven now, here below; for I really 
do not know what misfortune means. J never 
saw the face of poverty. Such sufferings as I 
have experienced were nothing but little scratches 
that hardly broke the skin. The calumnies cast 
upon me were crosses light as air, whose memory 
died with the sound of the voice that spoke them. 
How insignificant were all the accidents that 
have befallen me. On the other hand God has 
loaded me with many temporal and spiritual 
gifts, which I see before me at this moment.’’ 
For the preserving of joy and peace, it is im- 
portant to heed the saint’s warning that we 
should deal as lovingly and tenderly with our 
own stumblings as with our neighbor’s falls; 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE § 167 


that we should be patient not only with others, 
but also with ourselves. 
% 

St. Germaine Cousin of Toulouse (1579-1601), 
a shepherd-girl, was persecuted by her step- 
mother. Yet, when she gathered flowers in the 
meadows, when she looked at the silvery waters 
of the brook, at the broad fields, or at the ripen- 
ing grain, when she picked up and petted a little 
bird fallen out of its nest, she found in all these 
things an occasion to adore the goodness and wis- 
dom and power of the Creator. She admired 
with a pure heart whatever she saw in her soli- 
tude, from the plants quietly growing and adorn- 
ing themselves with blossoms to the dazzling sun; 
and everything aroused in her a holy joy.” 

* 

St. John Berchmans, the Jesuit (1599-1625), 
possessed such exceptional cheerfulness that he 
was called ‘‘Saint Ever-Joyful”’ and was beloved 
of all. 

St. Vincent de Paul (1576-1660), in the midst 
of contradictions, lost nothing of his customary 


25 Edelsteine aus reicher Schatzkammer. Sammlung aus den 
Schriften von Alban Stolz. Von H. Wagner, Freiburg, 1905, 260. 


168 MORE JOY 


cheerfulness. His soul remained always the 
Same and never gave way to gloom. He resigned 
himself to every dispensation of Providence joy- 
fully and patiently; it was all the same to him 
whether he gave glory to God by bodily suffering 
or by activity and work. 


% 


It is recorded of many saints that the joy inun- 
dating their hearts during communion with God, 
became so abundant and overflowing that they 
themselves begged God to diminish it lest they 
should succumb. 

St. Francis Xavier (+ 1552) on such occasions 
prayed: ‘It is enough, O Lord; it is enough. 
Lord, do not give me so much consolation in this 
life.’? From the island of Moro, a wild desert 
place, where he was in need of everything, he 
wrote to St. Ignatius: ‘‘These dangers and these 
voluntary toils, undertaken in the service of God, 
are an inexhaustible treasury of benedictions to 
me. Truly this is just the country to make me 
lose my eyesight in a few years’ time, so frequent 
are the streams of sweet tears of joy called forth 
by a superabundance of divine comfort; nor do I 
remember ever to have experienced so much of 


A GALLERY OF JOYFUL PEOPLE 169 


this in any other place; nor have I ever suffered 
less from my labors than I do here.’’ *° 

St. Philip Neri, too, at these floodtides of joy 
used to pray: ‘‘Itis enough, Lord; itis enough; 
I beg Thee, check the torrent of Thy consolations. 
Depart from me, O Lord, depart from me. Iam 
a mortal man, unable to support such an overflow 
of heavenly bliss. I die, O my God, if Thou dost 
not hasten to my help.’’ 


*% 


Abrcham of Santa Clara (1644-1709) says in 
a sermon: ‘‘Melancholy is the devil’s own 
nurse; gayety is God’s housekeeper. God does 
not like melancholy people. They are next of 
kin to death, for Melancholy is Death’s sister. I 
hike pleasant people; they have a sure mark of 
God’s presence with them and in them. The 
man with a good conscience will always be 
happy; he will be tranquil on all occasions, secure 
in all dangers, comfortable in all hardships. He 
will laugh in all circumstances, sing at every- 
thing, and always be gay.’’ 

* 

Blessed Crescentia of Kaufbeuren (1682- 

1744) was especially happy and contented when 


26 Life of St. Francis Xavier. From the Italian of D. Bartoli and 
J. P. Maffei, New York, 1889, p. 230 f, 


170 MORE JOY 


she received evil in return for good, ingratitude 
for affection, rudeness and insult for benefits. 
She felt that then she had made a twofold gain, 
because to the opportunity of practising active 
love was added the opportunity of practising pas- 
sive love by suffering. To her sisters she said: 
‘“We must do as the bees which suck only honey 
out of everything, whereas the spiders extract 
poison.”’ 
% 

Pius X, although brought up in poverty, was al- 
ways cheerful and happy in his boyhood. Later, 
as a poor curate, and then as a pastor, he lost none 
of his good humor. When he was rector of the 
Seminary of Treviso, they used to say: ‘‘No 
place is more pleasant than where Sarto is.’’ 
As bishop and also as patriarch, he always had 
a happy spirit and radiated the sunshine of good 
cheer. Perhaps the cares of the papacy have 
banished cheerfulness and jollity, but in his good- 
ness and friendliness the old happiness still some- 
times flashes out. 


XITTL 
MORE JOY 


Men, Brothers, what shall we do? If this 
question does not suggest itself to the readers of 
the foregoing considerations, I have written in 
vain. But if, as I hope, this question is raised 
by many a noble heart solicitous about joy, then 
the answer must surely be made in the words of 
St. Peter on Pentecost: ‘‘Do penance... and 
you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.’’* 
—that is, true joy will become your portion. 
Here again, as above, the true motto of progress 
is ‘‘Go Back!’’ Not back to the old times when 
there were no machines, no factories, no railways 
nor telegraphs nor power houses, no coffee nor 
newspapers; but back to religion, to Christian- 
ity, to the spirit of faith, to a serious view of life, 
to abstinence and self-conquest, to honesty, loy- 
alty, love,—to all those higher things so scorn- 
fully regarded by modern men, vain of their cul- 
ture and insane on the subject of education. 


1 Acts ii, 38. 
171 


172 MORE JOY 


Men have paid for their blunders by being al- 
most totally deprived of joy. Nothing but a re- 
turn to a true estimate, a conscientious apprecia- 
tion of these higher goods and forces can again 
quicken the dying pulse of life’s joy. 

Leave us in peace who champion Christianity, 
faith, morality. You have need of us, for you 
have need of joy, and we are the purveyors of 
joy. To attack us is not only foolish, but fatal 
to joy. Leave us alone, if not for the sake of the 
Salvation of souls, which means nothing to you, 
at least for the sake of hygiene, which you re- 
gard as all-important; if not for lofty, eternal 
motives, to which you are indifferent, then for 
the sake of joy, which you cannot belittle. If 
you have no taste for religious, spiritual joys and 
can no longer summon sufficient energy of mind 
and will to return to the spirit of faith and to 
Christian conduct, yourselves, at least leave the 
people alone and leave them their joy. Away, 
with your adulterated, poisonous, artificial wine 
of Joy; it makes men dizzy and sick at heart and 
less happy than before. Keep it for yourselves 
and drink yourselves into fever with it, if you 
wish, but let the people have their joy and keep 
it. You cannot make them happy ;—we can. 

We who although divided in faith, are united 


MORE JOY 173 


in accepting Christ as the Son of God, our Savior 
and Redeemer, and are anxious to lead men to 
Him and make them happy in Him, let us put a 
stop to our senseless fratricidal war. Were 
there no other motive, then merely for the sake 
of joy, we ought to end it. The energy and time 
it consumes are lost to joy; and the war itself is 
so directly destructive of joy that it should be 
terminated speedily at any cost. 

In a general way we have actually beheld and 
in further detail we may calculate what bitter- 
ness, coldness, estrangement, suffering, and sor- 
row have been introduced into the world during 
recent years by this religious war. Let us end 
it, or it will prove the disgrace of the century. 
We can certainly end it,—not however, by clam- 
ors and investigations which only pour oil on the 
fire, nor by asking, ‘‘Who began it?’’ but by de- 
manding, ‘‘Who will stop it?’’; not by denying 
our faith and neglecting our duty, but by never 
despising or attacking our neighbors because of 
their faith or their fulfilment of duty; not by 
surrendering our rights and abandoning our 
point of view, but by never encroaching upon the 
rights of our brethren; not by letting our relig- 
ious zeal grow cold through association with men 
of other beliefs, but by recognizing and emulat- 


174 MORE JOY 


ing their zeal; not by tolerating people of dif- 
ferent creeds, but rather by loving them. How 
much joy could be added to life by such a means! 

This is true on a large scale and in a general 
way. ‘To the individual, suffering for want of 
joy and sincerely asking, ‘‘ What shall I do?’’, we 
answer: ‘‘Seek not joy, after the manner of the 
world, in dance-halls and saloons, in alcohol, in 
filthy sin, in lewdness and ambition. You will 
never find it there.’’ Every unclean worldly joy 
must be paid for by the renunciation of a true 
joy. St. Bernard says that no kind of misery is 
worse than false joy. Seek joy where it can be 
found,—in the narrow path of duty, on the high- 
way of Christian conduct, in the mountain air 
of faith, in the sunshine of love, in the healthy 
atmosphere of hard work. ‘‘Only do your 
work,’’ says Goethe, ‘‘and joy will come of it- 
self.’”’ Thus you will find joy. You need not 
take this on faith. If you wish, you may at once 
experience it; you may yourself test and enjoy it, 


XTV 
LITTLE JOYS 


We cannot afford to wait until mankind has 
again returned to a reasonable, sound, Christian 
conception of life and Christian conduct, and has 
thus spontaneously acquired the joy it needs. 
Joy itself will accelerate this return, will be 
a remedy effecting and quickening the cure. 
There is so much that can and should be done to 
produce and diffuse joy. Everyone has an op- 
portunity to help by sowing good seed and plant- 
ing sturdy shoots in his own little garden and in 
the garden of many another. 

This opportunity comes from the fact that the 
deficit of joy need not, and indeed cannot, be met 
by the large offerings of the few. It calls for 
the small offerings of the many. It is not a mat- 
ter of boisterous festivals, brilliant fireworks, and 
regimental band-concerts; nor of streams of alco- 
hol and million-dollar palaces for entertainment 
and amusement; nor even of popular comedies 


and jokes that provoke roars of laughter. Those 
175 


176 MORE JOY 


noisy things act for the instant, momentarily 
quickening life’s pulse, but not enlarging its con- 
tent of joy. A hundred little joys are worth a 
thousand times more than one big joy—as a gen- 
tle rain soaks deeper into the earth than a cloud- 
burst. Moreover, little joys involve but small 
danger of abuse and of transformation into suf- 
fering. In a great joy these are constant dan- 
gers. Nothing is harder to stand than a succes- 
sion of perfectly happy days. 
“Whether the well is big or small, 
Thou needest not to care at all; 


From either comes refreshment sure, 
If it holds water good and pure.’’ 


Little joys! For these one requires neither 
riches, nor rank, nor honor, nor fame. Increase 
of the gold capital does not always imply increase 
of the joy capital. The wealthy man has many 
more joy-destroyers than the poor man. When 
our needs are few, joy is assured; it becomes an 
impossibility, if we are insatiable. Thriftiness, 
when free from avarice, is joy’s best friend. 

The little joys! He who, instead of despising, 
knows how to appreciate and to use them, will 
never lack for joy. The field of life is never so 
stony and hard that it does not yield each day 
some little blossoms of joy. But often these are 


LITTLE JOYS 177 


invisible to the pessimist; or they are trampled 
rudely under foot by ill humor and vexation, and 
the sick heart, instead of getting refreshment 
from them, consumes itself in feverish longing 
for great joys which are rare, for great prizes 
that are never won, for the kind of luck that 
makes a man a Croesus overnight—in story- 
books. Small wonder that a heart like this 
never attains its aim. It is always unhappy, not 
because there is actually no joy in life, but be- 
cause little joys are not appreciated, and the vio- 
let blooming beside the way is passed by un- 
noticed. 

If thy life is very dark, is this not perhaps ow- 
ing to the fact that all the blinds are drawn? 
Many a man is so hardened and calloused by ego- 
tism, that no light from above, no warm ray from 
without, can penetrate his soul. To those who 
think their supposed merits are never suf- 
ficiently rewarded with gold or honor or joy, 
Carlyle addresses these blunt words: 

‘‘T tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy 
vanity, of what thou fanciest those same deserts 
of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be 
hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it hap- 
piness to be only shot; fancy that thou deservest 
to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to 


178 MORE JOY 


die in hemp. ... Make thy claim of wages a 
zero; then thou hast the world under thy feet. 
Well did the wisest of our time write: ‘It is only 
with Renunciation (Hntsagen) that Life, prop- 
erly speaking, can be said to begin.’ ’’? 

Sunny natures—and all Christians should be 
children of the sun—rejoice at each ray of light, 
whether it shines down out of the clear sky of 
happiness, or glows for an instant through the 
mist of laborious life, or breaks out from amid 
dark clouds of poverty. How many motives 
for rejoicing, such people have every day! If 
healthy, they do not take this stolidly as if it had 
to be so; they rejoice at the blessing and realize 
its worth. They do not look on little disturb- 
ances of health as if they were tragedies; nor do 
they let a little nervousness put them out of 
humor. With strong resolution and quiet pa- 
tience, they break off the tip of each poisoned ar- 
row. liven in really grave illness, they are not 
wholly without joy. First of all, they have faith, 
hope and charity to keep them company; and 
they busy themselves even in the sick-room, lay- 
ing out very fragrant flowers into a little garden 
of joy. 

They are not continually fretting because 


18artor Resartus, Bk. II, ch. 9. 


LITTLE JOYS 179 


thorns always accompany roses, but rejoicing 
that roses are to be found amid the thorns. They 
do not complain that two nights enclose each 
day, but are glad that two days enclose each 
night. Practice makes them masters of the 
art of rejoicing; they are explorers, landscape 
artists, in the world of joy. <A beautiful tree, a 
quiet vale, hills and woods, the song of the birds, 
the marching of the clouds, conversation with 
simple and noble souls, bring to them truer, fuller 
joy than others get from long journeys, wonder- 
ful scenery, boisterous gatherings and amuse- 
ments. How many joys they find daily and 
hourly in prayer, in faith, in good thoughts. 
They know how to get at the friendly side of 
everything. No cloud isso black that they cannot 
find its silver lining. Out of a thousand individ- 
ual pleasures, natural and supernatural, they 
store up a permanent reserve fund of joy on 
which they can live, if for a longer or shorter 
period, their individual joys give out. This re- 
serve fund yields them a sort of interest by means 
of which they easily tide over the numberless in- 
conveniences, troubles and annoyances which are 
insuperable to many persons, that is, to the kind 
of persons who keep tight hold of noxious plants 
and deliberately suck poison out of them, instead 


180 MORE JOY 


of throwing them away and drawing little drops 
of honey out of the blossoms of joy. 

In advanced old age, which is rarely free from 
special trials, this reservoir feeds the clear 
springs that bubble up joyfully whenever thought 
digs into the soil of the past. 

In medicine the efficacy of minute doses is com- 
ing to be more and more recognized; and in the 
spiritual art of healing, minute joys are of es- 
pecial importance. 

‘‘What from thee little joys doth take, 
From thee takes great delight, 


A thousand narrow by-paths make 
The road to heaven’s height.’’ 7° 


2K. M. Arndt. 


XV 
JOY AND GRATITUDE 


‘Always to be happy is an art, and not a very 
difficult one. It consists merely of training one’s 
self to perceive, appreciate, and thankfully util- 
ize little joys. The eye and the heart must be 
kept open, otherwise thousands of joys will never 
be noticed and, of course, will yield nothing. We 
must not let our hearts get abnormally hardened 
or enlarged, as will surely happen if we give free 
rein to the desire for sensual joy, the search for 
sensual gratification. To indulge this hunger 
and feverish thirst will so deaden the apprecia- 
tion of spiritual joy that nothing but an immod- 
erate amount of sensuous pleasure will ever sat- 
isfy us. Self-control has to keep a firm hand on 
the heart, regulate its cravings and desires, and 
train it to be content with little joys. 

An excellent practical means to this end is 
the cultivation of gratitude and the practice of 
thanksgiving. Indeed, if we develop in ourselves 
the sense of gratitude, and for all the good things 
daily bestowed on us give hearty thanks to the 


181 


182 MORE JOY 


Heavenly Father from whom comes every best 
gift,’ then we shall never again be without joy, 
for along the path of life we shall discover new 
joys constantly blossoming and perceive peren- 
nial joys previously unnoticed. What a man 
prizes, he is grateful for; and what he sincerely 
gives thanks for, he knows how to value and es- 
teem. 

True and profound is Foerster’s statement: 
‘“Whenever the social structure creaks and 
groans, and the joints begin to loosen, this is un- 
doubtedly the result of a want of gratitude some- 
where.’”’? We may add: If there is so great a 
lack of joy in human life to-day this is owing to 
the fact that thankfulness has in great measure 
been excluded from many hearts, having been 
wilfully and deliberately drowned in the floods 
of bitter discontent. Thankfulness and joy are 
near of kin; and ingratitude is the root of much 
unhappiness. St. Paul, the Apostle, a keen psy- 
chologist, well knew what he was saying when to 
his earnest exhortation, ‘‘Rejoice in the Lord 
always; again, I say, rejoice,’’ he immediately 
added an exhortation to ‘‘prayer and supplica- 
tion with thanksgiving.’’? 


1 §t. James i, 17. 3 Philippians iv. 6. 
2 Jugendlehre, 380. 


XVI 
JOY AND EDUCATION 


To utilize little joys is particularly 1mpor- 
tant and effective in the lives of children. Chil- 
dren are so delicately organized in soul and body 
that great joys, extraordinary pleasures, costly 
presents, are rarely good for them; and never 
good except when rare. On the other hand, little 
gifts, little rays of joy, are very necessary for 
their proper development. The child has nat- 
urally a fine sense for little joys; but this sense 
may easily be deadened, as to-day, alas, very 
often happens. If we but understand and love 
children, we can really create their joys out of 
nothing. In this respect the mother is the best 
gardener of all; she can make the child shout with 
delight at flowers of joy developed out of a mere 
nothing, or at least, out of worthless and lifeless 
matter. The smallest gift, a plaything, a crust 
of bread, a blossom, accompanied with a glance 
such as a mother’s eye alone can give, or with a 


word such as comes only from a mother’s lips, 
183 


184 MORE JOY. 


will fill the child with bliss, will make him king 
of the whole earth, will place him, at least for a 
moment, at the goal of all his wishes. 

Even the serious nature, the stern strict char- 
acter, of the authority proper to father and 
teacher does not exclude opportunities of bring- 
ing joy into the life of the child. Here also love 
discovers a thousand ways of manifesting itself 
and of illuminating the child’s heart with its clear 
radiance. And these little joys of mind and 
body, provided for the child by the love of mother 
or father or teacher, retain their sweetness, 
charm, and fragrance, into the years of youthful 
maturity,—and even longer, when the heart is 
good. 

To-day in our method of teaching,—theoreti- 
cal, as well as practical,—there still remains this 
defect, that the significance of joy in the healthy 
development of the child from the first dawn of 
consciousness is not sufficiently appreciated; that 
the great service performed by this friendly aux- 
ilary in the difficult work of education and train- 
ing, is much less valued and utilized than it 
deserves to be. Schiller calls the mother’s lap 
the holy island where grief and care cannot find 
the child.’ ‘‘Like the eggs of songbirds and the 


1 Hpigr. 73. 


JOY AND EDUCATION 185 


newborn nestlings of the dove,’’ says Jean 
Paul, ‘‘so all at first require just warmth. And 
what is warmth for the human nestling? Joy- 
ousness. It brings out the young faculties like 
rays of morning light; it is the climate in which 
everything thrives but poison.’’’ 

This means of education is auxiliary to that 
of correction and discipline, which it should al- 
ways soften and balance, so as to counteract any 
hardening or depressing influences. The two 
so belong together, that strictness without joy 
accomplishes nothing and joy without strictness 
causes degeneration and ruin. In dealing with 
well-behaved children who have been properly 
trained and refined from their earliest years, this 
may serve as a rule: Things impressed on the 
child’s mind and heart, by means of joy, abide 
longer in memory and sink deeper into the dis- 
position and the very character, than things 
impressed painfully by the strokes of the rod,— 
provided always that the importance of educa- 
tion and the authority of the educator are not dis- 
regarded. 

Foerster applies to unfeeling teachers Ca- 
vour’s saying, ‘‘Any ass can govern with mar- 
tial law.’’ The higher type of teacher or 


2 Levana. 


186 MORE JOY. 


educator, by means of the psycho-physical 
method, that is with a sunbeam of joy or with a 
word and a glance, can get as good results as an- 
other with blows,—and he is likely to get more. 
The teacher who knows how to impart joy and in- 
struction at the same time has won the day. Joy 
is a truer ally and better assistant than the rod 
could ever be. When we succeed in having the 
child enjoy prayers, divine worship, work, acts of 
self-denial and charity, then his education has 
reached the heights; character will develop spon- 
taneously thereafter. 

Special attention must be directed to one par- 
ticular source of joy, of moral and bodily profit, 
of healthy youthful happiness and gayety, 
namely, physical exercise,—games, gymnastics, 
walks and, within reasonable limits, sport. Here 
we are in youth’s own domain. This source of 
Joy must be carefully considered in an age when, 
for many obvious reasons, a weak, stunted, sickly 
generation is growing up, unable to use its feet, 
incapable of finding pleasure in long walks and 
strenuous marches. Much suffering comes from 
this fact; and youth loses much solid joy on this 
account. ‘The best of all means for the strength- 
ening of the organism, is left unused; the best 
means for imparting a refreshing interest to 


JOY AND EDUCATION 187 


life’s journey is ignored; and so the faculty of 
observing and appreciating nature becomes atro- 
phied, the body drags on a lazy, sickly existence, 
and the mental and moral life begins to dry up. 
It displayed great practical wisdom on the part 
of Pius X when, in 1905, he threw open the Vati- 
ean Gardens for the athletic exercises of the 
Catholic Young Men’s Associations and, with his 
household, attended the ball games, races, and 
gymnastic performances of thousands of youths, 
and bestowed on the victors two hundred gold and 
silver medals. He also gave them this sound ad- 
vice: ‘‘ Young people should love outdoor exer- 
cise: 1t benefits both their bodies and their souls. 
We feel young again, even at seeing them run and 
Jump and amuse themselves.’’ In these words 
there speaks the spirit of St. Philip Neri. It 
would be well if their practical implications 
were taken to heart by educators of the young, 
and especially by the heads of trades unions, ap- 
prentice associations, and the like; so that both 
in summer and in winter youthful bands might 
be led away from saloons and taverns to the 
woods and fields for drill and exercise, for walks 
and excursions. That would develop a happy 
generation of young people. 
_ Itis told of a saint that once, as he was playing 


188 MORE JOY 


ball with his friends, the subject of death was in- 
troduced, and each one asked the other what 
should be done if the last moment of life were 
then suddenly to be announced. The saint an- 
swered differently from everyone else by saying: 
‘‘For my part I would keep on with the ball- 
game, because I began it for the love of God.’’ 
St. Charles Borromeo answered in much the same 
way when asked the same question during a game 
of chess. 

In their discipline and routine all academies, 
boarding. schools, and educational establish- 
ments should certainly utilize the excellent 
pedagogical instrument of exercise, rich in hy- 
gienic and moral value and full of irrepressible 
joy. All such institutions ought to be able to 
stand the test of happiness. A school which does 
not make satisfactory provision for the natural, 
innocent, healthy, light-heartedness of its young 
inmates, deserves to be closed. If it has not the 
spirit of happiness, it is without the right spirit, 
it is without the Holy Spirit. 

Joy should not be lacking even in those refuges 
of depraved and neglected youth which we call 
by the horrid modern name of ‘‘reformatories.”’ 
Admittedly this kind of education is the hardest 
of all. Heaven and earth are contending for the 


JOY AND EDUCATION 189 


possession of these poor creatures, and in the bad 
cases, hell has its victims already branded in both 
soul and body and locked in the iron clamps of 
habit. Firmness and mildness, punishment and 
severity, natural and supernatural helps and 
joys must strive with endless patience to loosen 
the bonds, lift the ban, and break through the 
triple armor of malice, shamelessness, and-moral 
helplessness. 

Here also, experience shows that severity alone 
simply accelerates the hardening process, and 
that kindliness and joyousness are more effectual 
than the strictest discipline. Of course, the right 
method is to combine kindness and strictness, but 
we must not be too niggardly in fixing the pro- 
portion of joy. Since it is force alone that keeps 
the inmates in these houses, and since the nat- 
ural reaction against force produces distrust, ob- 
stinacy, hatred, and defiance towards the heads 
and overseers, therefore no educative result can 
be obtained unless the feeling of hostility grad- 
ually changes into trustfulness. Such trustful- 
ness will be brought about only by much love; 
and love is manifested most winningly through 
friendliness and the giving of joy. 

For such manifestation, there is ample oppor- 
tunity in the routine of the institution. These 


190 MORE JOY 


poor creatures, in their sad lives, have, as yet, 
perhaps, very seldom met true, pure joy. Pos- 
sibly, from their very childhood, they have known 
no other means of enjoyment than alcohol and 
sin. Punishment and misery have swung the 
rod over them, making them miserable, embitter- 
ing their lives. Plainly then, in order that the 
poor little heart may be lifted off the rack of a 
guilty conscience, raised up out of its fear and 
terror, and gradually brought back to joy, it must 
first be taught to breathe freely, to believe in it- 
self and in men, to expand with a new hope, to 
take delight again in nature, to seek and to prize 
the heavenly joys of God’s forgiveness and grace. 
When its life is again free, when the warm sun- 
shine of joy again penetrates its soil, many good 
instincts that have been wrapped in winter sleep, 
will reawaken, and there will be hope of a fruit- 
ful education. 

Even through the bolted doors and barred win- 
dows of prisons and reformatories, the angel of 
Joy must enter. What a mission there is in such 
places for natural and supernatural joy. Note 
the highly interesting information imparted by 
Foerster: ‘Alongside one of the biggest pris- 
ons in America, there is now building a gigantic 
hothouse for all kinds of plants, in order that the 


JOY AND EDUCATION 191 


prisoners may learn and practise horticulture. 
It is an old observation that even the most brutal 
prisoners undergo a softening influence, if al- 
lowed to take care of aflower. At first they do it 
merely to pass the time, but little by little they 
~ come to enjoy it; and while they are carefully 
watering and trimming the plant, pruning its 
dead leaves, and providing it with sunshine, 
something within themselves that has long 
seemed dead comes to life again,—it is Joy in 
service, joy in the bloom of things, care for oth- 
ers. 

How instructive an undertaking! How de- 
serving of our imitation! To succeed in thus 
planting a slip of joy in one of these outcast lives 
and to develop it into a tree, is to have saved a 
soul and to have given back to society a useful 
member. In these attempts, due consideration 
should always be given to the spiritual physician 
of the soul who imparts the most holy and most 
helpful joys; he must always be allowed free 
access and wide influence. Sundays and holi- 
days ought to be essentially different from work- 
ing days; they should be real days of joy. Divine 
service should be as solemn as possible and, dur- 
ing the service, music and singing should inter- 


3 Jugendiehre, 515. 


192 MORE JOY: 


rupt the frightful monotony of prison life. 
Carefully selected reading that will elevate and 
cheer, should distract the mind from dark 
thoughts and designs, and a religious picture 
should shed a friendly ray upon the lonely pris- 
oner in his cell. 


XVII 
JOY THROUGH JOY 


The foregoing leads us naturally to the most 
important point of all. Noble Christian souls 
find no greater joy than that of giving joy to oth- 
ers. In this both self-interest and charity are 
consulted and reconciled. No higher pleasures 
can be contrived, no sweeter ones enjoyed, than 
those which we invent for others and enjoy with 
them. The gifts of joy we bestow upon others 
are given back to us again with interest, and 
raised in value. 

What is happiness? To make others happy. 
What is joy? To give joy to others. If this 
were the firm conviction of a vast number, and if 
it became deeply rooted through pleasant expe- 
rience of its truth, unquestionably, the entire 
deficit of joy would be very quickly made up and 
joy itself would grow greater and greater. That 
would rid us of many an enemy of joy and would, 
at least partially, settle the social problem. It 


would save us from the most prevalent error and 
193 


194 MORE JOY 


the worst sin of the age, that reckless egotism 
which represents itself as a principle of progress, 
although in fact it is a most unfortunate rever- 
sal,—a sort of miserable weakling that poses as 
a hero and calls sympathy and pity unmanly. 
Such a conviction would infuse a great warm 
stream of love into our chilled social life. It 
would teach us the art of adding little nosegays 
of love to our gifts and alms, instead of giving © 
a few things and upbraiding much, as the son of 
Sirach says." It would make us skilful in the 
art of quietly sowing little seeds of joy in the 
lives of our relatives and of all with whom we 
come in contact; and also, in the art of introduc- 
ing joy into the sick room, the hospital, and the 
asylum; and finally, in the art of preparing for 
the people joys that are free from alcohol,—an 
activity much more important than the prepara- 
tion of non-alcoholic beverages, since it is usually 
the soul’s unsatisfied craving for joy, and not 
physical thirst that drives the victims of in- 
temperance to the slaughter. 

As a matter of fact, the invention of joys 
would be far more of a blessing to mankind than 
many technical improvements; and in this field 
anyone can be an inventor. Such we really be- 


1 Heclesiasticus xx, 15. 


JOY THROUGH JOY 195 


come, the moment we boldly step outside the nar- 
row circle of selfishness and get accustomed first 
to think of others besides ourselves, and then of 
others more than of ourselves. 'T'o do this, we 
need not be rich or learned; one thing only is nec- 
essary, namely, that we be truly and heartily 
kind. ‘This kindness, this cordial desire to please 
others, quickly imparts a brightness to the face, a 
soft light to the eyes, a music to the voice, so 
that wherever we go we take with us real joy. 

If the intention of pleasing others were to rule 
our tongues, to inspire our speech and conversa- 
tion, what a blessing that would be! How much 
empty gossip and idle chatter would be done 
away with! How greatly conversation would 
be elevated and refined. Then, the little tongue, 
capable of utterly destroying joy, would become 
joy’s most noble and powerful organ. Instead 
of squirting poison into human lives, instead of 
twisting an unsuspecting neighbor’s words into 
invisible snares to draw him to his ruin, instead 
of bandying angry, deceitful, or lewd phrases, the 
tongue would then work real miracles and create 
whole new worlds of joy. For fortunately, joy 
is even more infectious than melancholy; and a 
friendly, cheerful word at the right moment may 
prove the door to salvation. 


196 MORE JOY 


It is surely true, as Foerster says, that the 
most dangerous weakness of our age is its tend- 
ency to overrate the practical efficiency of 
sternness and harshness,—police-methods, in a 
word,—and to underrate the practical efficiency 
of courtesy and generosity. In the following 
weighty observations he indicates the value of 
friendliness as a social and industrial factor: 
‘‘Often in the list of industrial advertisements we 
see the notice— Wanted, an energetic engineer.’ 
Unfortunately, this is not meant to refer to the 
type of man who is strong enough and brave 
enough to unite perfect kindness and personal 
modesty with inexorable firmness of management. 
It means a man energetic in a barking, biting, 
sheep-dog way, which involves the degradation 
of the wage-earner and the complete destruction 
of all real joy in labor and service. Let us not 
forget that a great deal of bitterness is due to the 
fact that men have a deep need of joy in obeying. 
They get angry at a brutal foreman, not because 
he curtails their freedom, but because he makes 
joyful obedience impossible for them and re- 
mains blind to the fact that they will obey orders 
only as men and not as beasts. ... Just as one 
insulting word can often cause an individual or 
a whole group to rebel, so likewise a single word 


JOY THROUGH JOY 197 


of appreciation or even a respectful tone, com- 
bined with the strictest discipline, can effect 
miracles of devotedness and of joy. Dostojew- 
ski, speaking of the effect of kindness in the Si- 
berian prisons, says: ‘I have met kindly, good- 
natured officers and have noticed the influence 
they exercised. A few friendly words, and at 
once the prisoner morally revived. They were 
as delighted as children and like children they 
began to love.’ ’’? 

In the art of giving joy to others, special ef- 
ficacy must be conceded to friendship, which, as 
a noble author says, came upon earth at seeing 
the first man suffer, in order to comfort him, to 
dry his tears, to protect him, to help him carry 
life’s burdens, to weep at his death and to assure 
him of a faithful remembrance.® 

2 Christentum und Klassenkampf, Ziirich, 1908, pp. 163 ff. 

3A. M. Liittwitz, Wo ist das Glick? Aphorismen, Freiburg, 
1910, 182. 


XVIII 
ART AND JOY 


To find one’s own joy in creating joy for others, 
—this opens up a whole new world of the noblest, 
purest, keenest joys, which have great social 
Significance, because they imply the co-operation 
of at least two persons, and often of hundreds. 
Were art dominated by this motive, were its chief 
purpose to increase the common store of human 
joyousness, then it might hope to grow strong 
and young and to renew itself again, for the in- 
dispensable sympathy between art and the people 
would spontaneously reappear. That this sym- 
pathy has been lost is not to be wondered at, when 
from a safe distance modern art keeps crying 
out: Odt profanum vulgus et arceo,—‘The 
common herd I hate and keep away.’’ Brush 
and chisel are guided by Nietzsche’s ideas of the 
Superman and the Arrogance of Genius,—ap- 
parently so full of power, but in reality empty 
and rotten. The people will never demand any- 
thing from an art which demands nothing from 

198 


ART AND JOY 199 


them,—they have too much character, too much 
loftiness and dignity to do that. Art has greater 
need of the people than they have of art. If it 
ceases to draw vital energy from the people as 
its soil, it is surely doomed to decay. 

Hence art should consider it an honor to be al- 
lowed to work for the people. It should find its 
greatest joy in delighting the popular heart and 
in using its splendid powers to make up man- 
kind’s immense deficit of joy. To paint for 
the sake of painting is an impossible programme. 
“Art for art’s sake’ is an empty phrase. Ht 
prodesse volunt et delectare poetae,—‘Poets 
wish both to profit and please,’’ is an axiom that 
holds good in every branch of art. An art which 
asks, but does not give; which demands the blind 
bestowal of recognition, reward and admiration; 
which is neither willing nor able to teach, in- 
struct or delight, has missed its vocation and for- 
feited its rights, especially in these days when 
everyone wears the badge of social duty. ‘All 
literature, art and science,’’ says Ruskin,! ‘‘are 
vain and worse, if they do not enable you to be 
glad; and glad justly.’’? 

In an age, called the “Social Age,’’? which 
thinks itself the discoverer of social duty and so- 

1The Hagle’s Nest, Lect. IX, p. 177. 


200 MORE JOY 


cial virtue, it is impossible that an art should 
flourish which asks nothing of society and re- 
pudiates all social obligation and co-operation. 
Art itself is the main loser by this exclusiveness. 
An art which exists for its own sake is just about 
as successful as a man who lives for his own sake, 
—both grow sour, dry up and wither away with 
egotism, neither possessing nor creating Joy. 
Having no good aim in life, such art gets no joy 
from living or creating. It loses all joy, because 
it has forgotten its noblest mission, namely, to 
give joy. We can offer no better advice than 
that it should abandon this cold, chill, lonely, 
stupid policy, go boldly out of itself and mingle 
again with the people in friendliness and kindli- 
ness and love. Let it declare with Antigone: 
‘‘T am here to take part in loving, not in hating,”’ 
—‘‘T am here to relieve, not to intensify misery, 
to prevent, not to increase suffering.’? Then we 
shall soon have a popular art, for which the peo- 
ple will be very, very thankful, one which will 
provide a corrective for our degenerate art and 
literature. 

Art should, of course, not confine its attention 
to the cheerful aspects of life, nor merely enter- 
tain and amuse. But it should create and pre- 
sent only what is adapted to make the life of the 


ART AND JOY 201 


people freer, safer, loftier, nobler, stronger, 
and consequently, happier. It should not, for 
the sake of a few dissolute rakes and “good 
fellows,’’ alienate and scandalize the multi- 
tude. It should not dare to offer the people 
husks of swine as food of joy, nor excite low 
instincts which inject poison and unhappiness 
into life. In all its work it must consider the 
people, keep in touch with them, and do them 
good. And even if it remembers and observes 
all this, it will have no call to grow conceited; 
for it will always be getting from the people 
more than it can give. It will send a sturdy, liv- 
ing root down deep into the rich soil of folk-life; 
and the folk will open up and expose their in- 
most soul to it and share with it their inexhausti- 
ble capacity for faith, morality, sound thinking, 
strong willing, in a word the whole kingdom of 
genuine poetry, that is theirs by right. 

For God and for the people! This is the motto 
especially of religious and ecclesiastical art, 
which should merit the praise bestowed upon 
Phidias by an old writer: ‘If a man’s soul is 
heavy-laden and he is so afflicted with the many 
cares and sufferings of life, that even sweet sleep 
no longer refreshes him, he will, I think, in the 
presence of this statue (of Zeus) forget every- 


202 MORE JOY 


thing in existence that is burdensome or terri- 
fying. Such is the work which thou, Phidias, 
hast conceived and executed; thus splendid is the 
brightness of thy art.’’? The Christian painter 
has a model greater, truer, more full of Joy than 
the Zeus of Phidias. 


2 Dio Chrysostom. 


XIX 
JOY AND THE CARE OF SOULS 


In the eighteenth century the noble-minded 
Ambroise de Lombez, addressed these words to 
priests: ‘‘ Above all things, joy belongs to the 
state and duties of the minister of the Lord, the 
priest who serves the altar of God; he, of all oth- 
ers must make himself all things to all men; he, 
of all others, must avoid the littleness of cow- 
ardly fear, the caprice of a bad temper, and the 
gloom of melancholy. It is his special duty to 
honor religion by the nobility of his conduct; to 
show by his behavior, even more than by his con- 
versation, that virtue has nothing savage or harsh 
about it; and to draw all the world to the prac- 
tice of it by the sweetness and gentleness of his 
manners. Hspecially should he endeavor to 
make timid and anxious souls understand that 
God has not called them to a state of hard slay- 
ery, but rather to a holy freedom; that where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, and that 


their perplexities and fears stand in the way of 
203 


204 MORE JOY 


that holy liberty.’ The more anxious and fright- 
ened such souls are, the more do they stand in 
need of the loving compassion of the priest of 
God. Let him impress upon them that the spirit 
of liberty and holy joy is the source of happiness 
even in this life,?_and that it increases in propor- 
tion to our progress and virtue, just as when we 
ascend mountains, the air becomes purer as we 
mount higher, and our bodies feel lighter and 
morejabh casey’ > 

We, to whom God has entrusted the beautiful 
office of caring for souls, are intimately per- 
suaded that our office includes an obligation to 
provide joy, and we may apply to ourselves all 
that is said to teachers, trainers of youth, and 
leaders of organizations. To help us put it all 
in practice, we have means, energy and gifts 
such as no one else possesses. Even our strictly 
pastoral activities,—teaching, preaching, and ad- 
ministering the Sacraments,—form a most im- 
portant, valuable, and in fact indispensable help 
in saving and enlarging mankind’s store of joy. 
Even when we preach penance, as our office re- 
quires, and insist upon renunciation, self-con- 
quest, temperance and purity, even then, and es- 


17I Corinthians iii. 17. 3 Op. cit., pp. 36-37. 
2 St. James i, 25. 


JOY AND THE CARE OF SOULS ~— 205 


pecially then, we are working on the side of true 
joy and against its enemies. 

At a time like this we have to be careful lest 
frequent sad experiences, depressing cares and 
apprehensions, and all the present wretchedness 
should influence us unduly to suppress the tone 
of joy in our preaching, catechizing, and exhort- 
ing; and lest pessimism should get a grip-on our 
life and vocation with its ‘‘dead hand’’ which 
despoils, kills, and sterilizes everything it 
touches. We have to be careful to maintain that 
healthy, vivifying optimism which the saints 
never lost. 

If, although sowing earnestly and zealously, 
we are yet not reaping a proportionate harvest, 
we should ask, ‘‘Has the sunshine of joy perhaps 
been wanting?’’ And if, despite every effort, the 
relation of pastor and flock is neither close nor 
cordial, might not a little more joyousness pro- 
vide what is necessary? Let us remember that 
we should never uproot evil without at the same 
time planting good. To uproot evil, hail and 
storm and thunder are serviceable, and some- 
times even necessary; but for sowing and plant- 
ing, it is not a tempest, it is rather much sunshine 
that we need. 

‘‘But men are incredibly indifferent and irre- 


206 MORE JOY 


sponsive!’’ In that case, let us do as suggested 
in an Evangelical pastor’s very readable medita- 
tions on his office: ‘‘The earth stared up at the 
sun, barren and lifeless. ‘Then I must shine 
with still more warmth and friendliness,’ was 
the sun’s response.’’ 

Not only should we joyfully discharge our du- 
ties, preaching and catechizing with joy, but we 
must also preach upon the subject of joy and 
speak about it to the children. The Apostle 
places joy among the fruits of the Spirit® The 
Church wishes Sundays and festivals to be days 
of joy. To present the truths of Christianity to 
the mind, is very important and necessary; it 
is also important and necessary to bring home 
to the heart the possibilities of joy in Christian- 
ity, in its doctrines, Sacraments, liturgical sea- 
sons, virtues and graces. These win the heart 
to Christ and lead it away from worldly and sin- 
ful joys. 

Noteworthy are the words of Fénélon: “If 
children (and people in general) come to think 
that virtue is sad and gloomy, but that freedom 
and license are pleasant, then all is lost; every 

4 Der Pfarrer. Erlebtes und Erstrebtes, von Lic. Dr. Rittelmayer, 


Pfarrer in Ntirnberg, Ulm, 1909, 30. 
5 Galatians v, 22. 


JOY AND THE CARE OF SOULS — 207 


effort will be in vain.’’ Properly understood, 
the saying of Nietzsche is true: ‘‘ Virtue has to 
be free of moral sourness.”’ 

We must be not slack in our efforts to improve 
religious art and sacred song, to make the House 
of God and the liturgical functions as beautiful 
as possible. All this contributes to God’s honor 
and to the welfare and joy of our people. We 
must also carefully cultivate the German folk- 
song in church within liturgical limits; and 
we must exhort our people to mingle religious 
songs and other fine songs with their work and 
recreation at home. <A good song at the right 
place and time makes one feel free and joyful; 
it purifies the atmosphere and keeps silly and ob- 
scene songs away. Lombez says very beauti- 
fully: ‘‘To live in this world is like the captiv- 
ity of Babylon to the servants of God; how can 
they then rejoice? Have they not reason to say, 
with the Israelites of old: ‘How can we sing 
the song of the Lord in a strange land?’ Yes; 
but even that complaint of theirs was a song. 
The prophet represents to us the people of God, 
singing that they cannot sing. Certainly there 
are mournful songs and joyful songs; but some 
little amount of joy must always accompany the 
action of singing; no one could ever sing from 


208 MORE JOY 


profound melancholy, for that produces nothing 
but silence and inactivity.’’ ° 

Let us not hesitate to repeat firm exhortations 
in the pulpit and at catechism. In so doing we 
shall only be following the example of the Apos- 
tle who said: ‘*Be not drunk with wine, wherein 
is luxury; but be ye filled with the Holy Spirit, 
speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and 
spiritual canticles, singing and making melody 
in your hearts to the Lord.’’* ‘‘Is any of you 
sad? Let him pray. Is he cheerful in mind? 
Let him sing.’’* Thus we shall be following the 
example of the early Christians. It is hardly 
necessary to recall the idyllic description of life 
in Bethlehem given by Saints Paula and Eusto- 
chium, the companions of St. Jerome. ‘* Wher- 
ever thou dost turn, the farmer at his plow is 
singing Alleluia. The reaper, dripping sweat, 
consoles himself with Psalms. The vine-dresser, 
pruning the branches with his hook, sings a verse 
of David’s. The Psalms are the songs of this 
country, its only love-songs. This is the way our 
shepherds pipe; these are the implements of our 
husbandry.’’ ® 


6 Op. cit., p. 164. 

7 Ephesians v, 18-19. 

8 St. James v, 13. 

9St. Jerome Ep, 46 (al. 17): Paula and Eustochium to Marcella. 


JOY AND THE CARE OF SOULS ~ 209 


We shall be imitating the healthy example 
of the Middle Ages, too. The Capitularies of 
Charlemagne prescribe that every shepherd, on 
his way to and from the pasture, shall sing re- 
ligious songs, so that he may be recognized by 
all the world as a pious Christian. ‘‘We find in 
a prayer-book written in 1509: ‘Where two or 
three are gathered together, let there be singing. 
Sing during your work in house and field, at 
_ your seasons of prayer and devotion, in times of 
joy and in times of sorrow. Good songs are 
agreeable to God; bad ones are sinful and must 
be avoided. Singing to the honor of God and 
His saints—such singing as is heard in Christian 
ehurches on Sundays and feast-days—the sing- 
ing of servants and children collected before the 
worthy heads of families is particularly edifying, 
and disposes the heart to joy. God loves the 
cheerful-hearted.’ ’’ 

10 Johannes Janssen, History of the German People at the Close of 


the Middle Ages. Translated by M. A. Mitchell and A. M. Christie, 
vol. I, pp. 261 f. 


xX 
JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 


Everything must co-operate in reawakening in 
the soul of our people that love of nature which 
used to be so lively, so warm, so tender.’ For 
a long time the love of nature has been regarded 
as a discovery of the Renaissance, as a thing un- 
known in the early centuries and during the 
whole medieval period. That, however, was a 
hasty judgment, unduly influenced by the view- 
point of our reading and writing age. A people 
may have deep appreciation of nature, without 
saying or printing very much on the subject. As 
a matter of fact, the moment we enter deeply and 
sympathetically into the popular life, we find 
this love of nature in every age. No sooner do 
we give close attention to the scant remnants of 
folk-song and artistic poetry, to the sermons and 
sacred legends, to the scenic background chosen 
by artists and cloister-builders, to the books of 

1 A. M. Weiss, Die Kunst zu leben, 8th ed., xvi: Die Kunst, mit 


der Natur zu leben, 462. 
210 


JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 211 


scholars and peasants, to popular usages and re- 
ligious customs, than there issues forth from 
these a song of appreciation and love of nature, 
rich, clear, and jubilant. Of course there are 
differences of kind and degree in the develop- 
ment of the love of nature; but its silver veins 
may be traced through all the centuries. Hs- 
pecially in the folk-song its waters have kept 
fresh as a fountain, even during periods when 
the pedantic classical poetry had no more spirit 
or life than a mummy,—as for instance in the 
seventeenth century, or in the eighteenth, when 
the poets indulged in tearful sentimentalism and 
sickly melancholy.? 

The love of nature is not wholly lost. It is 
still a strong lever, a powerful influence, in the 
movement and creative activity of art, science 
and literature, and throughout the whole life of 
the cultured classes. But in the life of the peo- 
ple it no longer has the strength and importance 
it once possessed. Among the people it has been 
put to sleep, if not killed, by modern culture,— 
a melancholy and ominous situation. 

‘“‘To commune and to live with nature,’”’ says 
Walter, ‘‘is necessary for man, as a matter of 


2A. Biese, Die Entwicklung des Naturgefiihls im Mittelalter und 
in der Neuzeit, 2 Ausg., Leipzig, 1892, 275 ff. and 295 ff. 


212 MORE JOY: 


course. Separated from nature, life becomes 
unnatural; serious dangers threaten the health 
of soul and body. Alienation from nature is the 
result of an exaggerated culture, of unnatural 
habits of life and work; and conversely, these 
unfortunate conditions are themselves intensi- 
fied by separation from nature. Unnatural en- 
joyments and delights take the place of natural, 
healthy, innocent pleasures and joys. Food, 
recreation, all things, assume an artificial, and 
consequently unhealthy, form. Man undergoes 
changes of mind and body which are not profit- 
able to him. Little by little he loses his sure- 
ness of aim, his vigorous originality, his sound 
instinct for the things necessary to life and 
health. Personality, self-contained individual- 
ity, gradually gives way to a weak, nervous and 
unsteady type. Men no longer have the living 
conditions required by nature,—light, air, 
healthy exercise, suitable nourishment, free view 
of the beauty and variety of creation. And, 
even though a one-sided intellectual development 
is going on at the same time, physical and spirit- 
ual degeneration will set in.’’? 

Ruskin attributes to a man’s spiritual petti- 
ness his utter inability to appreciate the beauty 

8 Kélnische Volkszeitung, vom 12 Juli 1908. 


JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 213 


of the heavens, the purity of water, the life of 
animals and flowers. This much is certainly 
true, that nothing so alienates us from nature, 
nothing so destroys respect and esteem, and con- 
sequently love for nature, as grossly materialis- 
tic sentiments and conduct,—intemperance, for 
instance, and licentiousness and intellectual in- 
solence and pride. True, the indifference to 
nature, now so frightfully common, often springs 
less from a diseased soul than from unhealthy 
environment and improper education. But it is 
also true that, whatever its source, the loss of all 
love of nature diminishes a man’s spiritual and 
mental worth, and coarsens and saddens the soul 
of the people; whereas a healthy appreciation of 
nature ennobles and beautifies life. | 
“There is growing up,’’? complains Sombart, 
‘fa race of men who lack the proper affection for 
living nature; who never greet the sun, nor dream 
themselves into the starry heavens; who do not 
know the voices of the song birds, nor the beauty 
of winter nights, when the full moon is glisten- 
ing on the snow-fields. It is a race devoted to 
watches, umbrellas, overshoes, and electric light 
—in a word, an artificial race. Even during the 
four weeks when, for once in the year, the crowds 
roll out from their rocky gorges into the summer 


214. MORE JOY 


resorts, they are not content until even there, on 
the Digue, on the mountain slopes and on the 
shores of the Alpine lakes, they feel asphalt un- 
der their feet.’’ 

Mother Nature! The phrase contains a deep 
Significance. Nature has indeed an educative 
function to fulfil with regard to man, and So, 
mother-like, she is equipped not only with many 
a means of discipline, but also with joys,—with 
such glances, words, and tones as a mother uses 
on her child. When Nature’s educative influ- 
ence is not exercised in the life of the people or 
on the individual, then there is something wrong 
—a mother has been found wanting. 

If this mother is to be what she should be to 
us, we must respect and love her. ‘‘With awe 
to tremble is mankind’s best gift,’? Faust tells 
us. If the soul has never learned, or has for- 
gotten, how to tremble with awe before the im- 
mensity and majesty of nature, at the roaring of 
sea or torrent, at the mighty dramatic proces- 
sion of the storm clouds, at the deep darkness of 
forest and cave, then it cannot appreciate the 
intimate joys of nature. 


“*Nature! great parent! whose unceasing Hand 
Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year, 
How mighty, how majestic, are thy works! 


JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 215 


With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul 
That sees astonished, and astonished sings!’’* 


Nature reveals her deepest mysteries to those 
who reverently love her, and performs for them 
many a motherly service. She speaks softly to 
them, when their hearts are grieved or troubled; 
she lifts them gently out of the thorns, calls 
them back again to herself when they are fright- 
ened or gone astray, and shelters them in the sub- 
lime stillness of the woods, where the silent trees 
hold converse with them; or else she wraps them 
round with storm and tempest, chiding them for 
being so petty and so fearful, and lends them her 
strength to do and suffer bravely. HKver the 
same, yet ever creative, she is always and every- 
where instructing us about the basis of all life 
and productivity,—about life’s two poles, per- 
petual stillness, and constant movement. 

What a tutor she is! Her ability to teach 
comes from the Creator’s love and wisdom. Her 
instruction is finely graded, divided into courses 
according to the seasons, not tiresome nor mo- 
notonous, always clear, stimulating, enjoyable, 
spiritually educative. It recommences with the 
dawn of each new day, when 


4 James Thomson, The Seasons: Winter. 


216 MORE JOY 


‘‘The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, 
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, 
And fleckéd darkness like a drunkard reels 
From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels: 
Now ere the sun advance his burning eye, 

The day to cheer and night’s dark dew to dry.’’5 


—and when, as a folk-song says, ‘‘in the morn- 
ing breeze the branches bow like pious children 
at prayer.’’ It is secretly interwoven with 
many a delicate thread in the daily task of each 
one of us, even when we are breathing a little 
fresh air, or taking a fleeting glance through the 
window at meadow and field. It is whispered 
to the heart in dreams, 


‘*“When the shadows darken, 
Stars awake to light, 

And a breath of longing 
Rustles through the night.’’ ® 


Nature’s most wonderful lesson, however, re- 
juvenating body and soul, is imparted after the 
stern nerve-hardening discipline of the winter, 
when in the spring, an echo of the first Frat vi- 
brates through her whole kingdom, summoning 
all energy to work, and every creature to new 
life; when ‘‘ River and brook are freed from ice 
by the lovely, life-giving glance of spring, valleys 


5 Romeo and Juliet, II, 3. 6 Goethe. 


JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 217 


grow green with happy hope and feeble old win- 
ter flees to his bleak hills.’’ ‘ 

Then, as Venantius Fortunatus sang in the 
sixth century, all bliss comes back; the flowers 
burst into bloom on the greensward, smiling with 
bright eyes; every tree rustles approval with its 
leaves; and the bird takes up again his song for- 
gotten during the cold winter. 

It is, therefore, a real misfortune, if blind, dull 
insensibility completely estranges man from na- 
ture, depriving him of all the comfort and re- 
freshment hid in her motherly bosom. That 
comfort will be given not only in regions dis- 
tinguished for natural beauty, and not only dur- 
ing special seasons of the year, but always and 
everywhere,—on the one condition that man 1s 
not insensitive. Nature speaks to the senses of 
everyone; but she speaks to the souls only of those 
who approach her sympathetically. When the 
life of nature and the life of the soul are in ac- 
cord, then real enjoyment of nature begins. 
Both with ourselves and with others, we can do 
much to promote progress from sense to soul, 
from interest in individual life to interest in the 
life of nature. 

This does not mean that by word and pen and 


7 Faust, 


218 MORE JOY 


picture, or by travel, we must make ourselves, 
our children, or people in general, familiar with 
unusually beautiful scenes. True, the vast pan- 
orama of nature, lofty mountains, cataracts, im- 
mense rivers and seas, will move, inspire, over- 
power the beholder,—when not seen too early or 
too often, and thus made dull and tiresome. 
But an ordinary landscape, with its more or 
less interesting variety of hill and dale, of wood 
and field, of meadow-land and murmuring brook, 
comes closer to a man and eventually may mean 
more to him. 

Especially serviceable and grateful is it to di- 
rect attention and sympathy toward the monot- 
onous and unattractive features of nature, to 
deserts, for instance, and ‘‘bad weather,’’ and 
whatever else is commonplace, or unnoticed, or 
despised. We should watch these things closely 
and get from them all the beauty, ‘nstruction, 
and training that they have to give. 

The limitless range of the plains and the bil- 
lowy harvest-fields; the flowering solitude and 
Sweet privacy of the heath; the ever shifting 
scene and the rich play of colors on the hills; 
the autumn days, cooling and fading and dying 
so peacefully, so quietly, amid their wavering, 
trembling mists; the rainy days, when nature 


JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 219 


seems to break out in tears of pain and grief, 
when ‘‘the rain beats down violently like a loud 
answer to an unspoken question;’’* the snow- 
fields lit up with millions of glittering stars and 
diamonds, when tree and wood are hung with 
silver spangles, when all lies cold and rigid and 
glassy clear, and the earth deep hidden under 
thick white coverlets of wool is fast. asleep, 
dreaming and breathing gently like a slumber- 
ing child; yonder clear spring that gushes forth 
impetuously into the light from a dark mountain 
cave, So busy to do good on every side and to give 
itself away; this lonely tree here, with proud 
bearing and splendid growth, like the monarch, 
as in truth it is, of all the region; the forest there, 
with its secret solemn inner life, nature’s model 
of a social state; in a word, every land and clime, 
every hour of the day and season of the year, 
every wind and every weather,—all have a spe- 
cial quality, an individual beauty, a message and 
a healing power for us, if we will but look and 
listen and open up our hearts a little. 

This sense of little things, this faculty of en- 
joying little things, is very important. Who- 
ever has it, finds everywhere in nature flowers of 
joy ‘“‘with milky stalk and honey’d cup.’? We 


8 Lenau. 


220 MORE JOY 


must teach the child to understand, respect, care 
for and reverence the little things in nature,— 
the flower, the tree, the spring, the bird. Then 
gradually his little eyes must be opened to the 
larger things,—first to his own near surround- 
ings, fields of grain, running waters, the woods, 
the noble array of forest giants, the meadows and 
highlands; then, later, to the ensemble of all these 
details in a landscape; next, to the way in which 
this picture at our feet is constantly enriched 
and enlivened by the daily and hourly display 
overhead, where on the wonderful blue back- 
ground, sun, moon and stars, wind and clouds 
incessantly reveal themselves; and then, finally, 
to the special beauties of each of Nature’s four 
moods or ages, that is to say, the seasons of the 
year. 

Our children have too many worthless toys. 
Their playthings should be sun and moon and 
stars, flowers and stones and brooks. Only 
when the feeling for nature has been so far de- 
veloped that the child really plays with these, 
talking and listening and mentally conversing, 
only then should he be taken on long journeys 
to foreign lands, upon high mountains and on 
the sea. And this feeling will be developed, not 
by bothersome lessons and ponderous instruc- 


JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 221 


tions and sentimental effusions, but by a prudent 
directing of the attention, by an occasional 
kindly, affectionate suggestion, by means of a 
pilgrim’s staff which for youth is a magic wand. 

The love of nature is most valuable, indispensa- 
ble, fruitful and rich in joy, when it strikes deep 
root in the religious soil of the soul. ‘Then, as 
Alban Stolz says, creation becomes one big Bible, 
filled with pictures, parables, similitudes and les- 
sons. The religious view of nature thoroughly 
permeates the Old Testament; and in the New 
Testament it is taught by our Savior Himself. 
To cultivate it and to use it as an aid in teaching, 
is primarily the business of the preacher and 
the catechist. From our Savior these may 
learn delicately to illustrate the loftiest and sub- 
limest truths with images and pictures drawn 
from nature and the life of the common people. 
Be it noted, too, that this is an excellent prac- 
tical means of making the country people aware 
of the great superiority of their life spent so close 
to nature, and hence helps to rid them of the 
morbid tendency to move to the great cities, 
where living conditions are foreign, and in fact 
hostile, to nature. 

A healthy piety readily unites with the love of 
nature, and a fine feeling for nature can give 


222 MORE JOY 


piety much nourishment and energy. Nature- 
cure should be prescribed in cases of gloomy, un- 
healthy piety. LLombez speaks severely to mel- 
ancholy Christians: ‘‘What then! When all 
nature 1s breaking forth into transports of glad- 
ness in the sight of its Creator; when the forests 
and the mountains, when the little hills and the 
valleys, are dancing with pleasure; when the 
streams and the rivers, flowing rapidly in their 
appointed courses, sing the praises of His glory 
in their soft murmurs, as though they clapped 
their hands for joy;° shall we, immortal souls, 
created for joy, shall we alone remain insensible 
to the gladness of the whole universe? Shall 
we be the only creatures to keep a gloomy si- 
lence?’’*® A Christian who did that would be a 
faithless interpreter of nature, misrepresenting 
instead of manifesting its true sense. 

Religious enjoyment of nature is a safeguard 
against that modern exaggerated love for na- 
ture, which springs from unbelief and impiety, 
from a pantheistic deification of nature, from 
morbid, fanatical devotion to nature, from silly 
attempts to substitute nature-worship for the 
worship of God and to find in nature the all-suf- 
ficient remedy for every ill. 


9 Psalms xevii, 8. 10 Op. cit., p. 20. 


JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 223 


In four weighty verses** the Apostle has 
drawn with master-hand the outlines of a Chris- 
tian philosophy of nature, and at the same time 
set the proper limits to love for nature. Na- 
ture is not divine, not eternal, not perfect, nor 
ean it satisfy the human soul; indeed, it is even 
not sufficient unto itself. Its present condition 
is abnormal. It is subject to vanity and corrup- 
tion, and it suffers in consequence of sin. This 
is proved by the contradictions, the discords, 
the melancholy, which so often form its dominant 
note, by the outbursts of grief, the tones of dis- 
tress, the lamentations which re-echo from coun- 
try to country. ‘“‘Every creature groaneth and 
travaileth in pain, even until now.’’ 

Can nature in such condition be anything of a 
help to man? Surely, yes! By the very fact 
that she is a fellow-sufferer, she must be sym- 
pathetic and able to console. But much more 
than this; for she also shares man’s hope, his as- 
pirations, his longing to be transformed. She is 
full of hope and hence, despite her sufferings, 
she is rich in joy. Her lamentations are also 
eries of longing; her pains are birth-pangs. The 
mountains are walls and watch-towers con- 
structed by misery digging down and aspiration 

11 Romans viii, 19-22. 


224 MORE JOY 


building up; and from them nature looks out 
upon a better future. There is a complaining 
note in the roaring tempest and the howling 
wind; but also an ardent desire is vibrating there. 
Sea and river chant a lamentation for the lost 
Paradise; but they sing also an Advent refrain, 
full of longing and of mighty hope. In the sun- 
set glow, all nature lies dreaming the blessed hope 
of a coming transfiguration. What still remains 
to her of harmony, of loveliness, of majesty and 
nobleness, despite all the ravages of sin—and 
it is no insignificant remnant—voices a twofold 
message to the human heart. Both messages 
speak of joy: one, a reminder of the perfect 
peace of paradise, as it were, its echo and after- 
glow; ** the other, a hopeful prophecy of the fu- 
ture, of the new heaven and the new earth, of the 
full redemption which will also be the solution of 
every riddle and contradiction and discord in 


nature. 


i2 For since that night the lily’s leaves are pale, 
And since that night the willow bows and weeps, 
The cypress still its dusky garment keeps, 
With fear the tendrils of the ivy quail. 
The gentle fragrance of the rose full-blown 
Is but her longing, but her breathed-out sigh 
For Paradise and all its glories flown. 
O’er Lebanon—his rocks with fires rent— 
There sounds from out that world one only ery 
Of the last cedar’s top already bent.—Lingg. 


JOY AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 225 


That is the mystical aspect of the Christian 
love for nature. It is found among the Saints 
and gives them their wonderful familiarity with 
nature, whose deepest mysteries correspond to 
those of the human soul: ‘‘The expectation of 
the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons 
of God. ... For we know that every creature 
groaneth and travaileth in pain even till now. 
And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the 
first-fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan 
within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the 
sons of God, the redemption of our body.’’ * 


13 Romans viii, 19-23. 


XXT 
JOY IN WORK 


Joy in work,—a good phrase! The two things 
cannot be too closely joined. Once they were 
completely united. Then the curse of sin pushed 
itself in between them and laid upon work both 
sweat and pain; but still did not render the 
renewal of the old union utterly impossible. 
Christianity lifted the curse. Our Savior took 
work by the hand, pressed it to his heart, gave 
it again a place of honor and wedded it to joy in 
the home and the workshop of Nazareth. By 
means of prayer, every Christian can restore to 
work its former blessedness and joy. 

For various reasons, however, work and joy 
may often be alien and hostile to each other and 
one of the chief causes of this is the failure to 
esteem work properly. This is hard to believe 
in ‘*T'he Century of Labor,’’? when earnestness 
and zeal for work are common. We have been 
censured already for having degraded labor by 
making it a consequence of sin and burdening it 


with a curse. To censure us for that is to mis- 
226 


JOY IN WORK 227 


understand us thoroughly; since it is not work, 
but the bitterness of work, that we trace to sin. 
Our doctrine solves a painful puzzle; it shows 
how work, so essential and well adapted to man, 
can be at the same time so bitter, so hard and odi- 
ous. We say that the curse of sin has left its 
mark upon work, but we by no means affirm that 
work itself has become and must remain.a curse. 

The curse is really placed upon work by those 
who lay heavy and insupportable burdens on 
men’s shoulders without ever lifting a finger to 
move them;* who lengthen working hours be- 
yond the limits of human endurance and, at the 
same time, lower wages; who see in work nothing 
but forced effort and accursed necessity ; who dil- 
igently instil into human labor the poison of ill- 
will and enmity and revolt, and hope only for an 
impossible future when work will be pure pleas- 
ure, and each man will regulate the kind and 
amount of his labor according to his own taste 
and comfort. 

All this shows, first of all, the lack of a proper 
appreciation of work. To esteem work for its 
own intrinsic worth, to esteem everything that 
deserves the name of work, to esteem the work of 
others and one’s own as well,—this is the foun- 

18t. Matthew, xxiii, 4. 


228 | MORE JOY 


dation and prerequisite of all enduring joy in 
labor. What we do not honor, we do not love; 
and what we do not love, we do not enjoy. 

Honor for every kind of work! In every 
man’s labor a human will, an immortal soul, ex- 
ternalizes itself, a man’s heart is throbbing and 
a man’s blood is circulating. All work is ¢a- 
pable of being spiritualized and ennobled to the 
highest degree. We must come at last to recog- 
nize that it is a sin against both culture and art 
for the ‘‘upper’’ classes to brand as vulgar and 
dishonorable whole groups of occupations which 
are necessary, and in fact indispensable, in the 
human household. Those persons should rather 
regard themselves as under personal obligations 
to all who perform menial offices and services. 
‘‘If there were nobody to perform the menial 
tasks,’’? says Treitschke, ‘‘the higher culture 
could not exist. We are beginning to perceive 
that the millions must plough and forge and 
plane, in order that a few thousands may govern 
and paint and write verses.’’ ‘‘The thousands’’ 
then should reward ‘‘the millions’’ not with con- 
tempt, but with grateful respect. ‘‘Honor the 
man with a burden!’’ was a phrase of Napoleon 
the Great. Honor him! He is carrying ours 
as well. 


JOY IN WORK 229 


All this is true from the merely natural stand- 
point. How great then can the Christian make 
even his most insignificant task! How precious 
his work becomes! Work, permeated with 
prayer, is like the gold standard; it has a fixed, 
even an eternal, value. Thus earthly deeds as- 
sume heavenly worth; they become treasures 
which moths and rust cannot consume, nor 
thieves dig up and steal; they produce everlast- 
ing merits which give title to a crown. Per- 
formed for the honor of God and with the help of 
the divine power of Grace, they become copies 
and images of God’s omnipotent activity. ‘‘My 
Father worketh until now; and I work,’’? said 
Our Savior. After him the Christian may 
humbly repeat, ‘‘My Father works, and my 
Brother, the God-Man, works, and I also work, 
to the honor of the Father, in the name of the 
Son, and with the power of the Holy Ghost.”’ 

Nothing hinders us from raising our daily 
work to this higher plane of dignity and 
value. Hence there should no longer be ques- 
tion of compulsory labor; the loud, cheerful 
‘*Aye’’ of a man perfectly willing to work pre- 
vails over the ‘‘Nay”’ of indolent, weary nature. 
Thus a man becomes free, even if born in labor’s 

2 St. John v, 17. 


230 MORE JOY 


chains. He determines the kind and value of 
his work; and he appropriates its best fruit, the 
absolutely sure pay which no one can lessen. 
With his work he is serving not men, not force, 
nor necessity, nor a gloomy fate, nor a machine, 
nor the owner of a machine, but the Overlord of 
all work, his God and Lord and Savior, Christ 
J esus.* 

So we learn to prize and honor and love work. 
We know that we never labor in vain, that de- 
spite all human weakness, misery and imperfec- 
tion, our work has a value. We know how much 
we owe to work, and what a benefit is a great 
serious life task; how work steels the will, trains 
the faculties, strengthens the whole man; how ex- 
ternal labor helps us in our inner work with our- 
selves, promoting moral purity, mental breadth 
and depth. Often we profit as much by failure 
as by success,—sometimes even more. In 
a great sorrow or a terrible crisis, we find that 
work has a wonderful power of healing. When 
work is completed, we enjoy inner peace, a pleas- 
ant fatigue. And not only do we rejoice after 
work, but we learn to be joyful during our work 
and even to enjoy the work itself. That is the 


8 Hphesians vi, 5. 


JOY IN WORK 231 


true joy of work; and sometimes it breaks out 
in song. ‘‘Give me the man who sings while 
at work,’’ says Carlyle. 

Esteem for work teaches also esteem for time 
and for every working day given us by God. 
At present this esteem has largely disappeared. 
Little is thought of losing time, of stealing the 
time of others, even of ‘‘killing time,’’—a good 
phrase, for waste of time is really partial de- 
struction of one’s life. This tendency is a symp- 
tom of decline, of culture overblown. 

Speaking of his own age, Seneca tells us: 
‘‘Some are oppressed with the monotony of al- 
ways doing and seeing the same thing, and they 
experience, if not hatred, at least weariness with 
regard to life. And to feel thus, philosophy 1t- 
self impelsus. For wesay: How long will this 
sameness last? I shall awaken and sleep, drink 
my fill and grow thirsty, get cold and then hot 
again. There is no end to anything; all things 
are set in a cycle. Everything flees and, at the 
same time, pursues: night follows day, and day 
night: summer gives way to autumn, and au- 
tumn to winter, and winter softens into spring. 
All things pass only to return. I neither see nor 
do anything new. And this, at last, brings on 


232 MORE JOY 


nausea. Many there are who find life, not bitter 
indeed, but utterly empty.”’ * 

Let no one entertain such sentiments, very 
‘‘modern’”’ again, just now, yet essentially low 
and base. What right hast thou to face with 
peevish, spiteful, ill-natured look, the young day 
that cometh beaming over the hills, and is greeted 
joyously by all nature? Why art thou so un- 
friendly and distrustful? Hadst thou not bet- 
ter make friends with it, since, in any event, 
along with it thou hast to go? Ask it what 
message, what task, it hath for thee. Perhaps 
it may tell thee to split wood, or to sweep the 
streets, or to teach children the alphabet, or. 
to write reports, or to learn lessons by heart. 
In any case its mission is always an important 
and most honorable one, for it bringeth thee 
from the Supreme Lord this order: ‘‘Work 
to live and to attain the goal of life, to fulfil God’s 
will, to provide for thine own welfare and to ben- 
efit thy neighbor; to gain for thyself and others, 
in time and in eternity, all the blessings contained 
in work and flowing from work!’’ Is that un- 
important, or worthless? Can a king or em- 
peror do more this day? 

Thou dost complain that thy days run along 

4 Bip, 24. 


JOY IN WORK 233 


monotonously, that the same duties pass and re- 
pass with the same leaden step, that the date 
on the calendar is the only difference between one 
day and another. ‘Thou longest to see that great 
day when for once thou mayest show what thou 
art and what thou canst do. Do not deceive 
thyself. Whether a day of thy life shall be great 
or not, depends upon thyself alone. Hach day 
will be just as important, as full, as holy, as thou 
willest it to be. Consider this well: each morn- 
ing is a newborn babe, each day a little life, each 
evening a sort of lesser death. 

If thou dost from the beginning misuse the day 
and fill it with nothing but idleness, listlessness, 
indolence, it will shrink up into a nonentity, it 
will be crushed between the two millstones of the 
past and the future, and all because thou hast not 
had wisdom enough to keep it present by means 
of work and a drop of eternity. If thou dost 
use it for the contrary of that purpose for which 
it was given, then in the balancing of life’s 
account, it will reappear, not merely as a loss, 
but as a debt. 

If at early morning thou hast looked the day 
bravely in the eye and grappled it in manly wise, 
as Jacob did the angel;* and if, during all the 


5 Genesis, xxxii, 24, 


234 MORE JOY 


day, thou hast plodded on simply in the rough 
furrows of thine accustomed toil, yet carefully, 
lovingly, joyfully sowing the seeds of thy man- 
ual or mental labor, and the seeds of good 
thoughts and good intentions, then truly hath it 
been as great a day as any in thy life. Honor 
work and each working day, and one great day 
will follow another. 

Thus springs up that fountain of joy in work 
which never runs entirely dry, although some- 
times perhaps it barely trickles forth. Its 
quickening, gushing waters bring life, refresh- 
ment, freedom and happiness into the most dis- 
mal, monotonous, unsatisfactory kind of labor. 
Whoever has dug a well of this sort in the depths 
of his nature and his life, guarding it carefully, 
replenishing it and keeping it clean, is safe; he 
will work with joy as long as he is able to work. 

But what when he can work no more? When 
the faculties of mind and body no longer obey the 
will to work? When after repeated efforts and 
attempts, he finally has to surrender and to elim- 
inate work from his daily routine? What then? 

Frankly, there can then be no further question 
of Joy in work. Man must now enter the school 
of suffering and undergo the stern discipline of 
a beginner, until he slowly rises at first to the up- 


JOY IN WORK 235 


per class, where people live in quiet patience, si- 
lently and tranquilly; and then to the highest 
class, where one learns the art of making neces- 
sity a virtue, endurance an activity, and pain 
itself a living force that produces work of higher 
order, greater goodness and more merit. 

Then the garden of joy will blossom anew with 
roses aS fresh and red as if watered with heart’s 
blood, reminding us of those that adorned the 
hands and feet and side of the Man of Sorrows. 


XXIT 
JOYS OF THE SOUL 


The senses are ever eager and busy to receive 
and transmit pleasant impressions. What we 
call ““joy,’’ however, properly belongs to the soul. 
Real value attaches only to the joy which presses 
its way through the region of sense into the proy- 
ince of the soul; and the most precious joys are 
those of purely spiritual origin, that is to say, 
the joys originating from the soul’s communion 
with the higher world. 

But these soul-joys can be experienced only by 
him who leads a soul-life, who is wont to with- 
draw as often as may be from the outer world 
and activity into the conclave of the inner self, 
and thus escape from the influence of the external 
Senses, ‘‘unsense’’ himself as it were, and create 
an inner independent world, from whose won- 
derful regions and mysterious depths the springs 
of life well forth. The ‘‘Islands of the Blessed”? 
exist only in the quiet ocean of the soul. 


The modern man is in the greatest possible 
236 


JOYS OF THE SOUL 237 


danger of becoming a stranger to his own inte- 
rior life; and this constitutes one reason of his 
joylessness. Modern culture does not care about 
the inner life. Under the dominance of ‘‘as- 
phalt culture,’’? as Sombart calls it, life has un- 
dergone a sinister process of externalization. 
It has become practically street-life, railroad- 
life, club-life. Father Weiss more severely 
calls it ‘‘mouse-life,’? spent in other people’s 
rooms; ‘‘frog-life,’? noisy with the croaking of 
banquet-rooms and amusement-halls; ‘‘bird- 
life,’’ flitted away on the railroad, ‘‘sparrow- 
life’’ spent on the streets. Nowadays everyone 
reads the newspapers. Necessary as they are 
and useful as they can be when good, they are 
not exactly adapted to promote interior concen- 
tration, since into the smallest hamlet and home 
they carry the noise of all the world. 

No wonder then, that there is to be noticed in 
people’s souls a great leveling, wasting, brutaliz- 
ing process. Beyond question, in both the up- 
per and the lower classes, many have no real 
soul-life, no interior life, at all. They are never 
at home. They forget, and at last they lose, 
their soul, and hence cannot but be unhappy. 
The man of this type has been infected with the 

1 Apologie des Christentums,3 IV. 819. 


238 MORE JOY 


feverish longing to live outside of himself. He 
ought to be learning to live within himself, to 
live into himself, to grow great, strong, happy in 
himself, and not to be planning to appear on the 
stage of the world in the heroic role of great 
man, reformer, liberator, philanthropist. 

Apart from every other consideration, there 
is much pedagogical wisdom in the Church’s good 
old rule of life, often scorned, often treated 
lightly or disobeyed, namely, to pray daily, to 
examine one’s conscience every night, to receive 
the Sacraments regularly. Whoever holds to 
this, escapes at least the most modern form of 
misery; he does not surrender his soul. He re- 
tains the faculty of seeing, hearing, feeling and 
living within, and of experiencing true inner 
joys. Foraman cannot make his heart light and 
joyous by emptying it, but only by deepening and 
broadening it and filling it with good things. 

How many there are who, if they look within, 
see only darkness. As Foerster puts it, their 
own interiors are for them the darkest part of 
the world and there they flounder about in total 
gloom and fall into errors and illusions that even 
other people see and laugh at. 

In such darkness nothing good can grow, least 
of all the healthy flowers of joy. St. Augus- 


JOYS OF THE SOUL 239 


tine? teaches that one of the most important 
duties of life is to keep the eye of the heart 
sound. This is the exhortation of Our Saviour, 
too: ‘‘If thy eye be single, thy whole body will 
be lightsome. Take heed, therefore, that the 
light which is in thee be not darkness.’’ * 

If this inner kingdom is well lighted, carefully 
ruled and kept in good order, it provides an ex- 
cellent soil for all the fine seeds of Joy which 
the senses will industriously collect and plant 
there, and for all those others which will be 
wafted down from the heavens above. Nor will 
there be lack of deep waters to reflect the stars 
of heaven, nor of clear streams to penetrate and 
vivify the whole region. 

_ Such is the blessing of the inner life. It is 
illustrated by the old tale of the scholarly ecclesi- 
astic who, in pursuit of his own perfection, 
sought a spiritual guide and adviser. After 
much searching, he at last found what he was 
seeking in the person of a beggar covered with 
sores before the door of a church. He said to 
the beggar, ‘‘Good day, Brother!’’ and the an- 
Swer came, 

2 Tota opera nostra, fratres, in hac vita est sanare oculum cordts, 


Serm. 88, 5. 
3 St. Luke xi, 34-35. 


240 MORE JOY 


‘*T have never had a bad one.”’ 

‘Then may God send thee better days!’’ 

‘‘My lot has always been the best.” 

‘‘How can that be? You are covered with 
wounds and sores.’’ 

‘That is true, but it is the goodness of God 
that has sent them tome. When the sun shines, I 
enjoy the sun. When it storms, I enjoy the 
storm, for God sends it.”’ 

**Who art thou ?’’ 

leam acking,’? 

‘Where is thy kingdom 2?”’ 

‘‘My soul is my kingdom and no rebellions 
ever happen there.”’ 

‘How camest thou to this supremacy ?”’ 

‘I sought it in prayer and meditation for a 
long time until I found it.” 

‘‘And how didst thou find it?”’ 

‘I found it as soon as I had rid myself of the 
external world.”’ 

Seneca says: ‘‘T would have thee never with- 
out joy. I would have joy born as a child in 
thy home; and so it is born when it abides within 
thee.’’* But this inner home has a doorkeeper 
whose name is ‘‘Silence.’’ In the discipline, the 
moral code, the asceticism of the Church, silence 

4 Ep. 23. 


JOYS OF THE SOUL 241 


has always been looked upon as important; and 
was so recognized by Pythagoras in his day. At 
present, silence is no longer honored and is very 
rarely met. Both Carlyle and F. W. Foerster 
have tried to restore it to honor again. The lat- 
ter well says: ‘‘Silence is the beginning of all 
freedom from the domination of the external 
world.’’® 

Being the custodian of the inner world, silence 
is also the guardian of interior joyousness; and 
nowadays, without the help of silence, one can- 
not long be sure of joy. Gossip has become a 
real epidemic in modern life. This is largely 
the fault of the press which lives in part by tat- 
tle and gossip. 

How much joy is destroyed by the inevitable 
gossip spoken and written, so idle and worth- 
less, so silly and mean and unfeeling and indis- 
creet, even when free of all evil intention! And 
how much joy is killed by malicious, poisonous, 
disgraceful gossip which disregards all restric- 
tions of privacy and decency, all authority, all 
friendship, and the innermost sanctuary of the 
family. And this sort of gossip, printed on 
cheap paper, lays claim to the title of public 
opinion! Public nuisance, rather, and public 

5 Lebensfiihrung, 40. 


242 MORE JOY 


fraud! Behind the newspaper article stands 
one man, and he oftentimes a scoundrel. Is he 
public opinion? He will do his best to mislead 
opinion and his occasional successes are sad to 
see. 

Verily, it is high time that all respectable peo- 
ple should meet the mighty power of gossip with 
the mightier power of silence, and should restore 
‘‘the blessing of closed lips’’ to a society whose 
peace and confidence have been disturbed. Pious 
and friendly speech can indeed effect much good 
and great joy, but there is likewise rich bless- 
ing and merit in a soulful, respect-compelling, 
considerate silence. 

Newspapers which feed upon gossip and, un- 
der the hypocritical pretence of representing 
public interests, assail the honor and reputation 
of blameless men who do their duty, should be 
recognized aS a common danger and banished 
from every respectable house. Those persons 
who have been selected as victims by such papers, 
must not let their joy in life be destroyed 
thereby. They must shelter their peace and joy 
under the sacred shadow of tranquil silence. 
No matter what reproach is cast at them, they — 
must bury it in the fathomless depths of perfect — 
Silence, after the example of Him who said: 


JOYS OF THE SOUL 243 


‘But I, as a deaf man, heard not; and as a dumb 
man not opening his mouth.’’® 

Just here perhaps, it will be necessary to set- 
tle a doubt. An interior life, fenced round with 
manly, soul-deep silence, should be the best gar- 
den of joy. But not seldom the most interior 
and deepest souls are subject to gloomy melan- 
choly; and, out of their silent depths, invisible 
save to the soul itself and to God, there seems 
to rise not the fresh breeze of joy but the de- 
pressing mist of sadness. 

The fact must be admitted. The problem de- 
serves a thorough investigation and explana- 
tion. But for our present purpose, it is enough 
to note that this melancholy of noble souls con- 
ceals in its dark coffers treasures too precious to 
be exchanged for the happiest moods or for all 
the joys in the world. Many others get enjoy- 
ment from these treasures; and the souls in ques- 
tion themselves possess joys not otherwise ob- 
tainable, joys as deep, as high, as complete, as 
glowing, as their pain and woe. 

‘“‘Our weakness is the lack of interior life. 
One truly interior soul suffices to give life and 
strength and inspiration to thousands.’’* 


6 Psalms xxxvii, 14. 
TA, M. Weiss, Die Kunst zu leben, 175. 


XXIII 
REJOICE! 


Here now, by way of conclusion, is a rule of 
life of startling simplicity. ‘You ask: ‘‘How 
ean I raise the level and enlarge the content and 
insure the continuance of joy in my life? How 
can I make every day a day of joy?’’ The an- 
swer is, ‘‘By rejoicing.’’ This seems to be a 
cheap sort of advice, but it is full of practical 
wisdom. We can learn love, we can win love, 
only in one way, by loving; and joy, only by 
rejoicing. It is far from true that we cannot 
train, yea, compel, our hearts to love. And it 
is equally untrue that we cannot make the heart 
learn joy, practise joy, live in joy. 

We can and we should do this. One can look 
happy outwardly, even though the heart is bleed- 
ing. But the will’s power goes much further. 
Where the will is chosen and recognized as the 
real ruler of life, it can effectually command the 
heart to be joyful at times when suffering and 


discomfort and discontent and pessimism might 
244 


REJOICH! 245 


otherwise prevail. Why should it not have this 
power? Ought we not to be able to do what a 
stranger’s will could do? And often enough not 
only the will, but even the mere mood, of another 
can wholly alter our state of mind, as for in- 
stance, when an ordinary witticism converts sad- 
ness into mirth. ; 
T shall not affirm that the will is always able 
to do this, nor that it always does it alone, by 
its own strength. There are times when other 
and higher aids are required; when the will is no 
longer able to master the elemental force of sad- 
ness and depression. But it remains absolutely 
true that a will trained and chosen to rule, a will 
not enslaved by passion or emotion, a will in 
touch with the powers of the other world and 
accustomed to regulate the weather of the soul 
for each day and hour,—such a will, in spite of 
any rising or falling of atmospheric pressure, 
can make the barometer always point to ‘‘ Fair.’’ 
Here again, as in so many other cases, we 
usually underrate the power of the will. It is 
really able to do far more than we think, more 
than we rely upon it to do. We underrate its 
power of achievement, because we do not suffi- 
ciently exercise and cultivate this faculty. The 
precepts of Sacred Scripture: ‘Serve ye the 


246 MORE JOY 


Lord with gladness’’* and ‘‘Rejoice in the Lord 
always!’’? are really commands and are possible 
of fulfilment. There is such a thing as ‘‘a will 
to rejoice,’’ but it has to be awakened and exer- 
cised, and, in this way, developed. 

What keeps thee each morning from exhort- 
ing thy heart to be joyful, and from repeating 
such exhortation several times a day? Is there 
lack of material, or occasion, or motive for joy? 
If thine eye be clear, then on either side of the 
path of life thou mayest find as many reasons to 
rejoice as to lament. When, after a refreshing 
sleep, thou beholdest before thee a new day of 
life, is that not in itself an occasion of joy? Or, 
if thou hast passed a sleepless, anxious night, 
dost thou not rejoice that it is over? If some 
great anxiety, or some downright misfortune, 
burdens thy soul, how needful is it that thou 
shouldst not fix thy gaze on this one dark spot 
alone, but that the will to rejoice should compel 
thee to look out through the darkness for a con- 
soling star. 

A strong, well-trained will becomes inventive 
in discovering motives and causes of joy; and, 
as a general rule, effectually sets them off against 
numerous occasions of sadness. Closely viewed 

1 Psalms xcix, 2. 2 Philippiang iv, 4. 


REJOICE! 247 


and properly judged, life is really as rich in joys 
as in sorrows,—or perhaps, is even richer in joy. 
But the pupil of the eye is often more sensitive 
to dark than to light. What is it that prevents 
men—especially faithful Christians—from re- 
joicing early and late each day? ‘‘Joy’’ and 
‘‘joyful’’ are words spoken in every language 
and by every voice, by nature, family,. vocation, 
work, faith, grace, church, prayer, hope, love. 
But we do not hearken to these voices; we let 
them be drowned in the noise of the world. 

If we accustom ourselves to listen to them, if 
we learn to rejoice at what is really joyful and 
avoid trampling the wayside blossoms clumsily 
into the ground, then by degrees the heart will 
acquire a better condition and a sure, peaceful 
rhythm, so that it will not be disturbed even by 
what is really unpleasant. Indeed, gradually, 
we shall learn to bring even unpleasant things 
into the sunny land of joy, to rejoice in hardship 
and misfortune, and even at hardship and mis- 
fortune. For by the light of faith we shall 
recognize these as the guarantees of everlasting 
joy, and welcome them as a new point of resem- 
blance to Our Lord and Master. 

\W hen we have arrived at this stage, the victory 
is won. The normal, healthy climate of the soul 


248 MORE JOY 

prevails, heaven’s azure vault overspans the life 
of earth, and, even if cloud and storm come, blue 
sky and sunshine soon return. On the gloom- 
lest rainy days, there is at least a rainbow; and 
in the darkest night, one little star brings com- 
fort to the soul. 

Everyone, therefore, should create his own 
small world of joy and guard it securely. ‘The 
habit of looking always on the bright side of 
things,’’ says Hume, ‘‘is worth more than a large 
income.’’ Ruskin’s advice is, ‘‘Make your- 
Selves nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are 
nests on the sea indeed, but safe beyond all oth- 
ers; only they need much art in the building. 
None of us yet know, for none of us have yet 
been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces 
we may build of beautiful thought—proof 
against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied 
memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, 
treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts, 
which care cannot disturb, nor pain make 
gloomy, nor poverty take away from us—houses 
built without hands for our souls to live in.’’? 

It is important that by means of a healthy op- 
timism, a fine sense of joy and a strong will to 
rejoice, our daily human need of happiness may 

3 The Hagle’s Nest, ch. ix: “The Story of the Halcyon,” 204, 


REJOICE! 249 


be daily satisfied. If our joys are little, they 
will be all the more numerous, and we shall never 
fall into a bankruptcy of joy with all its sad 
consequences. Then, the normal appetite for 
joy, being satisfied, will never degenerate into 
that fierce greed which bolts down even the husks 
of swine and cannot be appeased except with 
streams of alcohol. Then there will be no need 
of special places of amusement, of noisy revels, 
of excesses to whip jaded nature into joy;—we 
shall always be content. 

The more this art of rejoicing enters and takes 
root in the religious field, and above all, the 
closer it allies itself with gratitude to God, the 
less need we fear that continued joy will injure 
the austere Christian ideal of life and conduct. 
Far from promoting frivolity, joy will perform 
a valuable service for the religious life. An in- 
erease of joyfulness and gratitude might indeed 
work upon ordinary, dull, thankless, drowsy 
Christianity like the winds and storms of spring. 
Joy in holy faith and sincere gratitude for the 
possession of this supreme good, would scatter 
whole clouds of silly doubt, and give free breath 
to many a bosom weighed down, as if under a 
mountain, by the foolish notion that for cultured 
and scientific minds, faith is a fearful, almost 


250 MORE JOY 


an impossible burden. Joyous thanks and 
thankful joy for the precious benefits of the Eu- 
charist, of the sacraments and of prayer, would 
surely be the most practical way of trying to 
make better use of these gifts. ‘‘Thankfulness 
for gifts received,’’ says St. Catherine of Siena, 
‘‘feeds the source of piety in the soul; whereas 
ingratitude dries it up.”’ The taste of pure and 
holy joys robs worldly and sinful joys of all 
their charm and even instils an aversion for 
them. 

Rejoice then, in the saving gifts of God, and 
thou wilt surely give thanks for them. In thine 
own person thou wilt then disprove the saying 
that debts of gratitude are the last to be paid, 
and last among all debts of gratitude the debts 
for spiritual, supernatural benefits. Give 
thanks for these goods, and then thou wilt enjoy 
them, and thereafter thou wilt never have to 
complain of lack of joy. Whoever thou art and 
whatever be thy life and lot, let no day pass with- 
out rejoicing. At this present moment, while 
reading these words, arouse thy heart to joy, and 
arouse it again and again. And as often as any- 
thing cometh to weigh it down, look around in- 
stantly for a counterpoise to lift it up again. 
The practice of these exercises of joy will grad- 


REJOICE! 251 


ually make thy heart beat regularly and happily 
and will give fresh buoyancy to thy life. 

Yet at hearing the counsel, or command, ‘‘Re- 
Joice, rejoice,’ many a one will not know just 
how to begin; and perhaps may think the order 
idle, vague, useless. We may as well therefore, 
supplement it with another more concrete and 
practical rule: ‘‘Keep the world of thy thoughts 
and feelings in good order, and then joy will 
- come and remain always.”’ 

“The kingdom of God is within you.’’? How 
much is contained in this one word of our Sav- 
ior’s. The kingdom of God, and hence also the 
kingdom of joy, is within us. The greater part 
of our time and labor, of our care and love, 
should be devoted to this inner kingdom, which 
alone is wholly ours, where alone we are really 
masters. Is the weather fair within? Then let 
it rain and storm outside. In this kingdom the 
weather will be regulated according to the wind, 
the tide, the temperature, of mood and thought 
and feeling. 

It is not, however, our intention to lay down 
the rule: ‘‘ Exclude all but happy thoughts and 
feelings!’’ That would hardly be practical. 
The principle should rather be, ‘‘Only good 
thoughts and feelings are to be invited, admitted 


202 MORE JOY 


or entertained.’’ These, like bees, carry with 
them the pollen of joy; whereas evil thoughts 
breathe poison. 

Yet there prevails a tendency greatly to un- 
derrate the importance of the thoughts and feel- 
ings which each day and hour and moment float 
across the broad firmament of this little inner 
world like passing birds or clouds. We regard 
them as so much air, or we look on them as ir- 
responsible children who must be let do as 
they please, and for whose movements no one is 
answerable. As a matter of fact, they are spir- 
itual forces, which radiate their influences and 
effect results, good or bad, corresponding to their 
own nature. Brought into the light of conscious- 
ness and fed with the milk of volition, they be- 
come living beings, active energies, and, in union 
with numerous comrades, they not only set the 
tone for the inner life of the spirit, but also ex- 
press themselves in conduct and in deeds. 

Thoughts are subtle, secret things, yet they 
are also active forces, efficient for good or evil, 
as the case may be. This truth cannot be re- 
peated too often. It plainly implies that we 
must invite and entertain good thoughts, but re- 
press and banish bad ones. Here we have the 
solution of the most puzzling point in the prob- 


REJOICE! 253 


lem of joy. Good thoughts and feelings create 
in the soul a healthful, sunny atmosphere. Pure, 
lofty thoughts, thoughts of God and eternity, 
thoughts and feelings of faith, hope, and charity, 
of trust and mercy; anxious and sad thoughts, 
bordered with patience and resignation like eve- 
ning clouds fringed with sunset purple and gold; 
thoughts of one’s employment and calling, 
sprinkled with the holy water of prayer and good 
intention; even distressing thoughts of one’s 
own guilt and a smarting sense of sin, immersed 
in the blood of Christ and the mercy of God— 
all these are an odor of life unto life * and leave 
behind them the fragrance of joy. Frivolous, 
vain, dark, destructive, despairing thoughts; 
thoughts of envy, fear, rage, hatred, greed, 
malice, discontent, impurity,—these are an odor 
of death unto death, and they kill joy, just as 
they corrode and destroy the life of the body. 
For that reason the will must be determined 
to rejoice. In the inner kingdom, an end must 
be put to anarchy, to the disorderly play of 
chance and mood, to passive oscillation between 
the two extremes of ‘‘heavenly happiness’’ and 
‘tragic woe.’’ <A consistent and prudent rule 
must purify and direct the thoughts and emo- 


4II Corinthians ii, 16. 


254. MORE JOY 


tions, inviting or rejecting, uniting or dividing 
them. This creates order, rest and peace in the 
soul, and where they prevail, joy is not far away. 

These are no idle promises and expectations 
and anticipations, no mere fancies or imagin- 
ings. They are well-tested rules of conduct 
drawn from rich experience. We can guarantee 
their validity,—with one reservation which must 
again be strongly emphasized. 

The never to be forgotten point is that in the 
household of life joy is not root nor stem, but 
blossom, and a pure, perfect, sound blossom can 
never come from a diseased root and a rotten 
stalk. We must not forget that all true JOYS 
have to be merited and cannot be enjoyed except 
as the reward of good conduct. As Seneca said: 
‘True joy is a serious matter.’’> 

The foundation and indispensable condition of 
all true joy is the fulfilment of duty, conscien- 
tious work, fidelity to one’s earthly and heavenly 
calling, a right disposition of heart towards God 
and the God-Man. 

The edelweiss of true spiritual j oy cannot pos- 
sibly take permanent root among the thorns and 
thistles and stinging nettles of a life where 
work is feared and duty neglected, nor in the 

5 Bp, 23. 


REJOICE! 200 


swampy morass of lewdness and intemperance, 
nor in the hard, stony soil of unloving selfishness, 
nor in the sunless lowlands of laziness, nor in 
the desert wastes of a soulless, godless, brutish 
existence, nor in the quicksand and mire of fri- 
volity and superficiality. In such soil will flour- 
ish only short-lived flowers of evil odor with poi- 
sonous berries. 

Ruskin says that the pleasures resulting from 
sensuality, vain knowledge, base voluptuous- 
ness, all change into slow torture. 

The edelweiss of joy needs a deep, rich, sunny 
soil, pure mountain air, and a mountain climate. 
It grows best in the state of grace, in a life of 
virtue and holiness. There it is never missing. 
Neither is it missing in the life of the worst sin- 
ner, if he turns resolutely towards the sun and 
bends his steps from the low ground to the 
heights. At once joy smiles on him, encouraging 
him in his bitter task of penance. The higher 
one ascends, the clearer grows life’s atmosphere, 
the more earnest is the fulfilment of duty, the 
wider one’s bosom expands in the warm sunny 
regions of love, the less lack of joy there is, the 
more masterful and lordly grows the will, until 
at last it is strong enough to say to trouble: 
‘*Begone!’’ and to joy: ‘‘Come!”’ 


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